Ryan Goldberg is one of America’s finest long-form journalists; on this issue, horseracing, he is quite simply without peer. Having already covered slaughter (Deadspin, 2019), the anti-racing movement (Deadspin, 2019), and doping (Vice, 2020), Ryan has now turned his withering pen on subsidies, the giant elephant on Racing’s turf. As usual, his writing is clear, fluid, and exhaustive – easily the best treatment on the subject yet. It was so good, in fact, that even for someone who considers himself well-versed on racing economics, there were parts that left me agape.
Thank you, Ryan.
Please read and share, especially with our elected leaders, for nothing this big changes unless we force it.
“Is Horse Racing Still Too Big To Fail?”
At the end of this very well-written,informative piece are comments made re the content. They are worth taking the time to read as some of the entries are by those who were in the business and abhor it.
The will of the people needs to be strong enough to end this atrocious miscarriage of justice called horseracing. All corporate welfare to horseracing must be stopped! All criminal animal abusers must be PUNISHED by law! Any government approval of horseracing must be recognized for what it is! Any government approval of horseracing is an atrocious miscarriage of justice!
Reblogged this on Armory of the Revolution.
This was an excellent, well-researched and accurate informative piece that every taxpayer should read.
U.S vs. Canada.
Education and healthcare are both essential services that should be a right and not a privilege.
In both countries our public education is financially funded by the public coffers, but healthcare is different.
In Ontario Canada our “free” healthcare is paid for by high taxes via our public coffers so that everybody can get it when they need it and not go bankrupt in the process or lose their home contrary to the U.S.
For almost 15 years Ontario horse racing received 345 million per year of public subsidies depriving much needed money to our healthcare services and now it’s virtually impossible to get a family Doctor and you’re looking at a minimum of 6 month waiting list for diagnostics like MRI because there are not enough machines relative to our population.
Even worse, just before Covid hit, Premier Ford slashed thousands of educator jobs including hundreds of teachers and thousands of healthcare jobs including nurses citing shortage of money.
Yet, he turned around and quickly found 100 million per year for horse racing, another 50 million per year to breed horses because that’s where his priorities obviously lie – outrageous.
So when Covid hit Ontario we were at a huge disadvantage because our hospitals were already short staffed directly due to Ford slashing nursing jobs in favor of financially supporting horse racing.
This is one of the reasons why Covid is rapidly spreading in Ontario, despite Ford’s draconian unconstitutional mandatory repeated lockdown requirements (3 lockdowns in 3 months putting hundreds of Ontario businesses permanently out of business) that are driving people crazy and it hasn’t done anything to slow down the spread.
Our short staffed hospitals were not prepared and couldn’t possibly be when there were skeleton nursing and medical staff already because money was allocated to horse racing and we’re STILL PAYING FOR IT!
I’ve figured out that if Ontario was not supporting horse racing and the money was put into healthcare we would have state-of-the-art hospitals, plenty of medical staff, and no waits for diagnostics like MRI.
Ontario residents, most of whom couldn’t care less about horse racing, and don’t want to support it.
Yet, politicians like Ford and former Wynne prioritize horse racing over our own children and health making Ontario one of the few geographical regions in the world where a horse can get an MRI faster than the majority of our population!
Obviously I support vet care for horses, but I sure as hell support education and healthcare for people especially children making this upside down equation insane!
Even as I’m writing this, Ontario horse racing is back at the public taxpayers water trough again – time for a refill.
They now want Premier Ford to pay for the daily training fees while racehorses are being trained at Woodbine for the delayed racing season due to 30 days of mandatory lockdown in Ontario!
This money to come out of “unused” purse money during the lockdown.
The majority of racehorse owners live in multimillion dollar homes up in Newmarket Ontario, are not financially hurting and they are the ones targeted to have their racehorse training fees paid for?
If they own racehorses and are complaining about their training fees than they shouldn’t be in it to begin with and it’s long overdue to send “unused” purse money back to the public coffers where it belongs.
Public money should never go to support what’s, essentially, a private enterprise business that kills a whole lot of racehorses along the way whether in Canada or the U.S.
Absolutely outrageous & ridiculous that a horse can get an MRI before a person needing one! Those owners / trainers should have to pay for their own training fees! In our state the young people can receive free community college which we know several young people are utilizing to become diesel mechanics.Agree that this article was well researched & written & hopefully will be widely distributed.