The New York Sun is reporting that a plurality of voters judged Albany’s rejection of funding for the proposed West Side stadium as the state government’s biggest achievement in 2005.

Fair enough, I reckon, and, judging by this excellent piece in the same paper, John Stossel might agree:

If the wealthy owners of sports teams want new stadiums, let them build them with their own money. They’re not entitled to our money.Just as cities take people’s homes so rich corporations can do what the politicians call “urban renewal,” telling the courts economic development is a “public use,” sports tycoons argue their stadiums are in the “public interest.” Their politician friends tell voters that a stadium will “bring jobs,” be “good for the city,” “pay for itself.” Bunk. Study after study finds stadiums cost far more than they return. “Assume it did create a thousand jobs,” economist Mark Rosentraub, author of “Major League Losers,” told me. “Then a $170 million stadium costs $170,000 for every single job. “You could have done better just saying to the people who would have been hired, here’s $50,000 – start a business!” Subsidizing stadiums isn’t capitalism – it’s big-money socialism.”