While Texans freeze, Jerry Jones gets paid

I was told a few years back to cut down on the swearing in this blog. But there's a column by Sports Illustrated's Michael Rosenberg that makes me say yet again "Fuck the Dallas Cowboys and especially, Fuck Jerry Jones."

While millions of Texans struggled with power outages, food shortages, unsafe water and record cold this week, Jerry Jones made millions off of their suffering. And it will cause more financial hardship in the months to come due to skyrocketing gas and electric bills.

As Texans continue to go days without power or heat, shale-driller Comstock Resources Inc., a publicly traded company of which Jones is the majority stockholder, has, according to NPR, been selling gas at “super-premium prices.” It has been “like hitting the jackpot," Roland Burns, Comstock’s president and CFO, said on a Wednesday earnings call.

This is business to Jones, as defensible to him as—I’m being hypothetical here, of course—another billionaire claiming that not paying taxes “makes me smart.” Jones does not need the money, but need has nothing to do with this. Making more money for himself is one way he keeps score. (Winning Super Bowls is the other, though he hasn’t done that in almost three decades.)

And I'm sure it will shock you to learn that Oil Man Jerry is a sizable donor to GOP causes - nearly $400,000 to GOP politicians before 2020, and he also gave $1 million to Donald Trump's sketchy Inagural Committee. It also helps explain this picture with then-Presidential candidate Chris Christie after a rare Cowboys playoff win in 2015.

Another way Jones "gaining" on the scoreboard is that like a true "free market" Republican businessman, Jones has no problem with socialism if he's the one getting the tax dollars. And he got a ton of those tax dollars to build the stadium commonly known as JerryWorld, which has helped to make the value of his Cowboys grow exponentially.

The citizens of Arlington contributed $325 million to fund Jones’s playhouse, AT&T Stadium. Jones pays the city a paltry $2.5 million per year to operate the stadium. This deal is supposed to be an economic generator for Arlington, and maybe it has been. But an implicit reason for agreements like these is that a team does not just belong to the franchise owner. A team belongs to the citizenry that cheers it on. Right.​...

Jones won three Super Bowls early in his Cowboys tenure and has desperately tried to win a fourth ever since. In that way, his desires seem aligned with those of his fan base, but still: He is doing this for him, not them. He did foot most of the expense of the stadium, but that was not because he wanted to boost the Arlington economy. He wanted the world’s fanciest stadium. In the 11 years since it opened, the Cowboys’ franchise value has gone from $1.6 billion to $5.7 billion, according to Forbes.

Rosenberg ends his column by noting that the business activities of Jerry Jones is symptomatic of the type of oligarch who only sees dollar signs, and their opinion of right and wrong doesn't go beyond what affect his personal bottom line. And like most rich businessmen, they won't pay a price long-term for their greed, because they're in charge of the things that people want to consume.

Jones should be embarrassed, but billionaires don’t get embarrassed by what they see as good business deals. They get embarrassed when many people call them out, or when the public shame is so great that the good business deal morphs into a lousy one. Cowboys fans can show Jones how angry they are by cutting down on their financial support of the team. Logic says they should. History says they will not. Jones is betting that he can make money by price-gouging the very people he purports to represent. In that sense, he is a fitting owner of America’s Team.

You wonder why I hate that franchise more than any other?