[ed. This sounds pretty much like every federal agency I've ever encountered (and reminiscent of my own beloved state agency). Political manipulation, personnel transfers, budget cuts, administration lackeys, et al. Standard operating procedure for undermining objective regulatory oversight. In the end, government inefficiency just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.]
There are sports franchise owners who, through civic-mindedness and steely pursuit of victory, win the admiration of their fans. Then there is Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins. Since the self-made advertising mogul bought the storied football franchise fourteen years ago, the team has had only two winning seasons, a sorry record widely attributed to Snyder’s penchant for micromanaging coaches and throwing money at expensive past-their-prime veterans rather than finding new talent. Yet that losing record hasn’t kept the billionaire Snyder from reaping record profits by exploiting every conceivable revenue stream—from jacked-up ticket prices to luxury skyboxes for lobbyists to charging fans to watch hitherto free team workouts. He sued a seventy-three-year-old grandmother who, after losing most of her assets in the housing crash, couldn’t afford to keep up payment on her season tickets. And when a Washington City Paper writer protested, Snyder sued him, too.Two recent events further highlight Snyder’s imperiousness. The first is a renewed chorus of demands by everyone from Native American activists to the D.C. city council that the team change its inherently offensive name—to which Snyder last year responded, “NEVER—you can use caps.”
The second is the settling last fall by the National Park Service (NPS) of a whistleblower complaint over a secret sweetheart deal Snyder extracted nine years ago to give his Maryland home an unobstructed view of the Potomac River. It was a small concession in the grand scheme of things, the kind that the rich and powerful frequently wheedle out of government, especially back then, during the presidency of George W. Bush, when such favors were flowing like booze in a skybox. But its discovery set off a decade-long campaign of bureaucratic retribution over two administrations that nearly sent an innocent man to prison. The story of that little favor wonderfully (if depressingly) encapsulates the essential character of our times, in which average people who play by the rules are made to suffer by the blithe manipulation of those rules by the people at the top.
by Tim Murphy, Washington Monthly | Read more:
Image: Dan Snyder, uncredited
