Vikings Stadium Corporate Welfare and Klout Scores: @savethevikesorg
Over the past month, I’ve been kicking out some Tweets about the Vikings Stadium corporate welfare proposals that folks like Save the Vikings are pushing. Stuff like this:
Over that time, I’ve noticed that Klout has found me more Klout worthy. For those of you not familiar with Klout, it’s a site that tries to quantify if anyone is paying attention to your tweets. For example, here is a comparison of my Klout score vs. @savethevikesorg. I’m in red and @savethevikesorg is in blue:
Next is the Klout Network comparison, which is a measure of how influential the people are who follow you:
Next is Klout Amplification, which looks at how often people retweet what you tweet, together with how influential the people who retweet you are:
And, finally, True Reach, which takes a shot at measuring how many people are actually paying attention to what you’re tweeting about:
I don’t have a solid explanation for why my Klout is increasing while Vikings Stadium corporate welfare lobbyist, Cory Merrifield’s in dropping, but I’m willing to take a guess:
- As people become more aware of the possible cuts to higher education, special education, and healthcare, spending public dollars on a stadium for a private company makes less and less sense.
- As the public prepares for a state government shutdown, providing corporate welfare to a guy in New Jersey is the least of their concerns.
- As the public learns that the seating capacity for the general public would be nearly the same in a new stadium, while the tax deductible suites for corporations would increase from 98 to between 120-150, they start to wonder why they should be paying for this rather than the Vikings or the corporations who’ll benefit most.
- When the public ponders paying to build 21,000 parking spaces in the suburbs for use 8 times a year, they start to wonder what’s happened to our government’s fiscal responsibility.
It’s certainly not a lack of passion that’s hurting the Vikings Stadium corporate welfare lobbyists. It comes down to public priorities vs. private greed.
Update: A Twitter user going by the handle @VikingsStadium1 thinks this post sucks:
Coincidentally, that Twitter user has a relatively new account and has described themselves as “not Kevin” if you know what I mean.
July 5th, 2011 at 5:41 pm
My stadium proposal is more modest than putting public money into it directly, or allowing Racino and putting proceeds into it as indirectly subsidizing it.
Wholly private sector – free market. Let Zygi build it, his dime, but then let him make book on NFL games, among those attending. He could have quarter by quarter betting on the Vikes home games, or possession by possession. A trifecta if you get the scores correct at end of each of the first three quarters.
Net yardage difference on a pair of changes of possession, with the house taking all if either team scores a touchdown or field goal.
During the week betting on injured players. Odds of a Harvin headache being a heartbreak, etc. Betting on whether the photos were really of Favre.
In half a year The Z’d recoup his costs of building the stadium, and he could make a fortune subleasing or franchising his enfranchised bookie rights to the tribes. They could even name him an honorary tribal member – something few New Jersey natives achieve in Minnesota.
July 6th, 2011 at 11:11 am
[...] Stadium with Vikings Gambling? Jul.06, 2011 in Politics, Vikings Deets commenter, eric z, has come up with a creative way to get Vikings fans to pay for their own stadium: Let them gamble in their seats: My stadium [...]
July 6th, 2011 at 9:56 pm
I’m not sure how much I trust Klout. It lists me as an influencer of Governor Dayton’s press secretary, and somehow I just really doubt I influence her thinking that much. But my score is higher than Brodkorb’s, so it must be doing something right.
July 6th, 2011 at 10:06 pm
@Kevin, this post was a fun way to needle Cory, who’s a bit too obsessed with providing corporate welfare to Ziggy Wilf.