House Committee Kills NASCAR Sponsorship

I don't have a problem with this. 103 million taxpayers dollars spent on NASCAR sponsorship in three years? I can think of at least a dozen worthy programs to dispense with $103 million.

The National Guard spent $35.2 million in sponsorship for the No. 88 team alone in 2010; $28.8 million in 2011; and $26.5 million in 2012.

The Air National Guard spent $650,000 as title sponsor for one race, the 2010 Air Guard 400 at Richmond. For $650K the Guard got 439 recruitment leads. Of those, only 6 qualified as potential recruits.

NASCAR's version of the $640 toilet seat. 

Source

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Permalink Reply by Josh Fisher on May 18, 2012 at 6:49pm

That's the thing too, this is part of their advertising budget, they have a set amount of money to spend on Advertising and they spend a good chunk of it on Sports sponsorship. It's not like that they're spending money on NASCAR that was otherwise allotted for Bullets or Pot-Hole patching.

Plus think about it, everybody knows that if they take away the money from Sponsorship that money isn't going to go to be used for something else in the Military, no that money will be re-distributed to various Special Interest groups and be used to fund all those stupid studies that you hear about every day. Literally the other day it was reported that the Government just spent millions of dollars to have a study to see if they were spending too much money on Government funded studies...

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Permalink Reply by David Z on May 18, 2012 at 6:48pm

In my opinion, it’s not the use of tax dollars to support a team but drivers selling a product they will not use themselves. Robby Gordon does drink SPEED Energy, but Earnhardt is not in the National Guard. Kevin Conway needs/uses ExtenZe, but Ryan Newman is not in the Army. Jeff Gordon flip flops between Coke and Pepsi. Drivers should stand behind the products they sell, if it’s good enough for them to tell others to buy the product, it should be good enough for them to use.
If tax dollars should be used in sports, which I have no problem with, it should benefit every tax paying competitor, not just one team.

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Permalink Reply by alan4s on May 20, 2012 at 9:16am

Need to save tax money for these $17,000 drip pans:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/us/politics/behind-armys-17000-dr...

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Permalink Reply by WJM on May 20, 2012 at 12:49pm

There's a parallel here. I think of the countless posts imploring Robby to  just:
a. Add another car (or two)
b. Buy Gibbs chassis'
c. Lease Penske engines
d. All of the above
It's just that easy when you're spending someone else's money.

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Permalink Reply by kevin watford on May 20, 2012 at 9:54am

WJM for president!

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Permalink Reply by WJM on May 20, 2012 at 12:51pm

Worst. Job. Ever. No thanks.

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Permalink Reply by FD REBEL on May 20, 2012 at 1:35pm

Money well spent to recruit, great target marketing, RARELY does the government talking heads get it right.

I have seen HUGE amounts of tax money pissed away at my fire department, and that is just a fraction of a fraction of what really hits the shittter in the big picture!