Conservative darling Schilling |
...Curt Schilling said Friday that the collapse of his 38 Studios video game company probably has cost him his entire baseball fortune, and he placed part of the blame on Rhode Island officials, including Gov. Lincoln Chafee.
Schilling said during a 90-minute interview on WEEI-FM in Boston that he put more than $50 million of his own money in the company and that he's had to tell his family that "the money I saved during baseball was probably all gone." source
He is not the first former athlete to make bad investments, nor will he be the last. However, there is a unique twist to his story. Schilling has been notorious for expressing his vehement opposition to government spending and bail-outs:
Schilling is a self-described conservative with a disdain for big government, which he considers intrusive and overbearing. He is a big believer in people helping themselves and solving their own problems.
A couple of lines from an old post on Schilling’s blog, 38 pitches, sums it up:
“If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
“A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.” source
So after receiving $75 million dollars of government set-asides, who did Schilling turn to for help?
He missed a $1 million payment on the loan this week, then delivered a check that bounced today. Late in the day, he delivered another payment that the governor of Rhode Island says cleared.
Earlier this week, he asked his Rhode Island state government friends -- already on the hook for $75 million -- for more. source
And once again, we witness yet another conservative proponent of extreme individualism -- a flawed theory of every man for himself -- beg big bad government for a helping hand and a bail-out.
This hypocrisy runs deep in conservative politics/economics; and is akin to an avowed cookie hater always getting caught trying to steal not just some cookies but the entire jar of cookies.
Alas, the GOP politics of our age: Socialism for their losses -- we bail them out -- and capitalism for their profits -- they keep the loot.