Minor League Paulsons.

• Author: Zirin, Dave
• Position: Edge of Sports - Viewpoint essay

We now live under cloud of crisis where debt is socialized and profit is privatized. It's like Marxism brought to you by the House of Morgan. And we have Treasury Secretary Hammerin' Hank Paulson to thank.

Like father, like son. Meet Merritt Paulson, the spawn of Henry Paulson. Yes, his name is Merritt. That would be like if Dubya had been named "Smarty" Bush.

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Thirty-five-year-old Merritt, by virtue of hard work and hundreds of millions of family dollars, owns the Portland Beavers, a minor league baseball team, and the second tier soccer squad, the Portland Timbers. While his father goes through $700 billion of our money to bail out the banks, Merritt wants his own socialized crumbs from the community table.

He is insisting upon $85 million in public funds from the City of Portland to build a new sports complex for the Beavers and to upgrade the Timbers' stadium.

Merritt, to be fair, is not the sole owner of the Beavers and Timbers; he has only an 80 percent stake. The man with the remaining 20 percent stake is ... wait for it ... Hank Paulson himself.

You can almost imagine the scene: the Paulsons in front of a roaring fire, lighting Cohibas with 100 dollar bills, ruminating on their $700 billion credit line, and saying, "What's $85 million more?"

Keep in mind that Hank Paulson is worth $700 million on his own (he just loves that 700 number). The cash between the cushions at the Paulson family compound could pay for the new stadium in Portland, and yet Merritt wants more. He wants more, even though 16 percent of Portland's children live below the poverty line, and the homeless rate in the fair city has nearly doubled over the last year.

Merritt Paulson has laid the groundwork for this budget grab by trying to present himself, in the best liberal Portland tradition, as a community-minded idealist who wants responsible development for the delicate Pacific Northwest town.

In an interview with Biz of Baseball--a website that shills with the aggression of an auctioneer for publicly funded facilities--Merritt said, "I think sports is...