2019 buick enclave oil capacity

I have a 2012 Buick Regal with a 2.4l Ecotec engine. Last year, the check engine light came on and after driving it for some time, I finally took it in to get it checked. Turns out, it was a bad oxygen sensor so I got it replaced. No issues for awhile. Then, a couple months ago, I took it in to get the oil changed. They reported that there was no oil on the dipstick when I brought it in, and they couldn't see a leak. I researched this engine and now see that bad piston rings causing oil to get where it's not supposed to be is a common issue with this engine. Called some local mechanics to see if they would look at it, but they said they don't do that and suggested I take it to a GM dealer, and said they would probably just replace the whole engine. I don't live near a dealer and don't really think it's worth it for how much it would cost. Yesterday the check engine light came on and is now throwing a p0420 code (I guess it's a catalytic converter issue?) I'm thinking the oil burning and getting sent through the cat is messing it up. Is this car screwed? Should I take it in to get looked at or just drive it till it dies? Not really interested in spending much more money on this thing, and it drives fine. Just not sure how serious the issue could be.

Hi all, post title says it all.
More context: After he bought his 2015 Scion xB from the first owner in 2019, he's done all the servicing himself. CARFAX has nothing. Says he changed the oil every 5000km (Hi from Canada!) Just today, he sent me a photo of him replacing the brake pads and rotors.
Is this fine? Either way, I will definitely take it for a PPI and that will probably be the deciding factor. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks so much.
Below is his post:
2015 scion xb for sale. Has 103000km on it and slowly going up. Oil changes every 5000km. Recently Spark plugs, coolant, transmission fluid just replaced at around 100000km. Brand new tires just put on less than 1000km ago. Front and rear brake pads and rotors just replaced Previous owner does have a rear end claim on it for around $2400 Price is firm at $14000"

Note, I’m not willingly not getting oil, I’m broke asf atm but needing to do doordash deliveries to get by until I get my new job. How any more miles can I go?

(I also posted this in /vegaslocals. If reposting here isn't allowed, I apologize, and feel free to take down).
Hey Everybody!!!
I just want to keep you in the loop on what’s going on with Oakland A’s owner John Fisher’s request to have the Nevada Legislature give him up to $380 million in public funds for a new stadium. The Legislative session ENDS MONDAY, which means that they will ram this through very quickly in the next 48 hours or so or call a special session.
NOW IS THE TIME FOR YOU TO SPEAK OUT!!!! I have put together a fairly well-documented argument below demonstrating that this is a bad deal and Fisher is a terrible partner. Please share this post and information as widely as you can! Most importantly, contact members of the Legislature and BE HEARD!!! Be sure to tell them that you live in Nevada!!!
Contact your Assemblyperson and State Senator!!
Assembly contact info: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/LegislatoA/Assembly/Current
State Senate Contact info: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/LegislatoA/Senate/Current
If you would like, you could use or modify this sample letter which contains URL links supporting the claims.

Dear Senator or Assemblyperson [Last Name], I am writing to express my strong opposition to the proposed public funding for John Fisher's baseball stadium in Nevada. I believe this project should be stopped for several reasons: Lack of transparency: Fisher and his team deliberately released funding details at the last minute and scheduled the only public hearing on Memorial Day evening, during a Golden Knights playoff game, limiting public awareness and participation. This is a shameful subversion of democracy and I hope you had no part in it. Neglected education system: Nevada ranks 49th out of 50 in educational attainment. Our focus should be on improving public schools, not funding a billionaire's stadium. Unrealistic economic projections: Expert analysis discredits the claim that the stadium will attract an additional 400,000 tourists, which, even if true, would only be a 1% increase on an annual basis. A Stanford economics professor expressed his belief that Fisher’s Stadium will result in the equivalent of a few hundred, permanent, long-term jobs. Fisher’s economic projections are detached from reality and unreliable. Fisher's history: His track record with the San Jose Quakes, another publicly funded stadium venture, raises concerns about his commitment to investing in player payroll and creating a competitive team. Fisher owns the Quakes. After he was given a public handout for a stadium, he did not change or competitively fund his soccer team. Troubled partnerships: Mark Davis of the Raiders, who shared the Oakland Coliseum with the A’s, has expressed frustration with Fisher's management group. MLB owners are also frustrated by doing business with Fisher. Nevada should expect to have the same experience if we proceed. I urge you to oppose public funding for John Fisher's stadium. Let's prioritize transparency, education, and responsible use of public funds for the benefit of all Nevada residents. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Please consider my perspective as you make your decision. Should you require further information or have any questions, I am available to discuss this issue. Sincerely, [Your Name]

Feel free to modify, expand or use as-is. You can also write your own letter too. I'm just trying to make this as easy as possible for everyone so that we are HEARD!
TLDR Bullet Points For Big Argument Below:

• Oakland A’s owner John Fisher, and team President Dave Kaval, strategically released details about stadium funding to minimize public awareness and participation. They released the legislation on Friday of Memorial Day weekend and the only public hearing was on Memorial Day during the Golden Knights playoff game.
• Fisher and Kaval failed to even show up at the Memorial Day hearing, demonstrating a lack of accountability and a disregard for public concerns. They have never publicly answered any questions.
• The prioritization of funding for a sports stadium over public education in Nevada, particularly the Clark County School District, is concerning.
• Economic projections presented by Fisher's lobbyists are questionable and disconnected from reality, as experts have pointed out.
• Fisher's history with the San Jose Quakes of Major League Soccer raises doubts about his commitment to investing in a competitive team with public funds.
• The low payroll of the A's compared to other MLB teams suggests a strategy of minimizing expenses for greater profitability.
• Mark Davis, owner of the Raiders and A's shared the Oakland Coliseum, expressed personal animosity towards Fisher and his management approach. Other MLB owners have expressed similar frustration about doing business with Fisher.
• Elected leaders should consider these concerns and prioritize the needs of the community over the interests of wealthy individuals.

PUBLIC FUNDING FOR JOHN FISHER’S STADIUM MUST BE STOPPED!!!!
1. They Don’t Want to Hear From You
Fisher and Kaval strategically waited until the 11th hour to release details about the handout. From USA Today:

The A’s, their cadre of lobbyists in Nevada and friendly politicians and tourist officials are doing their best to hide the sausage, introducing, finally, legislation for state funding of myriad projects on the Friday night of a holiday weekend, and then offering public discussion on the evening of Memorial Day. Pretty slick! And it sounds like Gov. Joe Lombardo’s signature would be waiting.

The only public hearing on giving away hundreds of millions of dollars occurred on Memorial Day. And not just on Memorial Day — it was in the evening during Game Six of the Western Conference Finals where the Golden Knights punched their tickets to the Stanley Cup Finals. A hearing at 4:00 AM on Christmas morning would have received a higher profile and greater public scrutiny.
They didn’t want you to know about the hearing and your opportunity to be heard. And if, by chance you did hear about it, they didn’t want you to be able to show up and be heard. They are not very subtle about their preference to not hear from you, the unwashed masses.
Guess who else wasn’t there? A’s owner John Fisher and President Dave Kaval. I am not making this up. They didn’t bother to show up to the Memorial Day hearing. They want us to give them hundreds of millions of dollars, but couldn’t be bothered to show up at the hearing and answer questions themselves? Where were they Monday night? What was so important they couldn’t be bothered to show up for a public hearing to answer questions in public? Fisher and his army of lobbyists have had weeks to meet privately with lawmakers behind closed doors. Are you telling me Fisher couldn’t give us regular folks two hours in public?
2. What Are Our Priorities?
There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Nevada, and in particular the Clark County School District, fail to provide adequate public education. Nevada ranks 49th out of 50 for educational attainment. Of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, Las Vegas ranks second worst for schools. This is unacceptable, yet real education reform is never a priority for the same politicians who are willing to pull the Memorial Day/Stanley Cup Playoff hearing shenanigans for Fisher.
If our elected officials can turn on a dime to hand out hundreds of millions of dollars to a billionaire for a sports stadium, why can’t they act with similar urgency for our disastrous public school system?
Our failed public schools, especially CCSD, are the most significant impediment to economic growth and diversification. The number one reason companies and individuals are reluctant to relocate to Las Vegas are our terrible public schools. If we want to create economic growth, we need to fund and fix our public schools, not build another billionaire a sports stadium.
3. The Numbers Don’t Make Sense. They’re Basically Fraud.
Whenever a billionaire asks the public to finance his stadium, the ask is always accompanied by a series of fantastical economic projections. If you watched the Memorial Day/Stanley Cup Playoff hearing, you saw a powerpoint presentation made by Fisher’s hired lobbyists. The numbers presented by Fisher’s lobbyists aren’t simply slightly embellished, they are disconnected from reality.
First, there is the claim that Fisher’s publicly funded stadium will bring an additional 400,000 tourists. John Mehaffey breaks down this non-sensical claim in the Nevada Independent:

The 400,000 number seems inflated to me. The A’s host 81 baseball games per year. This projection assumes 4,938 tourists at each game that would otherwise not be in Las Vegas. Considering only one American League market is within a reasonable driving distance, most of these tourists would fly to see their home team. Many or most of these tourists would go to two or three games in a series to justify this travel. If the average number is two games, that puts 9,877 visitors in the stadium per home game. If those fans go to an entire three-game series, that number is 14,815. If the 1.8 million locals attendance prediction is accurate, and visiting fans tend to go to a series as opposed to just one game, the A’s project that they will sell out the stadium's 35,000-seat capacity every home game. If visitors go to only two games, that is 90 percent of capacity. That is a bold projection for a team that was last in attendance in 2022 and at the bottom so far in 2023, especially since no MLB team comes close to selling out all its home games. The lack of flights makes 400,000 new visitors seem impossible Most teams that would visit the Las Vegas A’s stadium are in the American League. Most are in the east where nonstop flights to Las Vegas are scarce. For example, I found five or fewer nonstop flights per day from six of the other 14 American League cities. Four of those six teams had home stadium attendance below 20,000 per game in 2022. It’s hard to imagine that 10,000 or 15,000 fans will fly across the country for a series when that is around the average attendance for the 81 home games in their own cities. Some displaced fans may be within driving distance, but the point is one that needs to be considered. Las Vegas would need dozens of flights per series that don’t exist to accommodate this prediction.

Mehaffey also points out that Miami, which recently built a publicly financed stadium, also has 40 million visitors a year, just like Las Vegas. However, the Miami metro is substantially larger than Las Vegas. “In 2022, the Miami Marlins averaged 11,204 per game. A market with a much larger metro population that posts similar tourism numbers does not come close to the A’s projections. There is no reason to think Las Vegas will be different.”
Stanford economics professor Roger Noll agrees with Mehaffey that the attendance numbers Fisher projects are not credible. From USA Today:

“Baseball is different than the NFL,” Roger Noll, professor of economics emeritus at Stanford University, tells USA TODAY Sports. “This notion that of those 162 baseball games, I've got to see those three that are between the A's and the Royals in Las Vegas - it's just nonsense, right? It's not true, it's not going to happen. “That's the fundamental reason why economists, when they do research on the impact of sports teams, typically find that the effect on local incomes and employment is slightly negative.”

But what about job creation?

Noll says the hours that stadium workers put in – for 81 games a year – computes to roughly 15% of a full-time job. “So the 500 people who work at the stadium on game day, you got to multiply that by .15 to get the number of full-time equivalent jobs, which means it's less than 100. Wow,” says Noll. “You know, $1.5 billion to create less than 100 jobs, right? Wow.”

4. Grossly Underfunded Payroll
The total payroll for the 2023 A’s is just $59,630,474, just 37% of the MLB average payroll of $116,112,414 and just 17% of the highest-spending New York Mets ($345,474,042). To provide context, the highest paid players in the league, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, will each make $43,333,333. Verlander’s salary, by itself, is 72% of the entire A’s roster!
This meager spending is by choice, not necessity. It’s a strategy that works. From Sports Illustrated:

The A's were a top-5 team in 2022. Not on the field. The A's finished with a 60-102 record, second-worst only ahead of the Washington Nationals. On the spreadsheets though, they netted $62.2 million according to a report from Forbes. The only teams they finished behind were the revamped Seattle Mariners who made the playoffs for the first time in two decades, the San Francisco Giants, the Boston Red Sox, and the Baltimore Orioles who had a Mariners-esque upswing and an A's-esque payroll.

When the A’s do develop talent, they quickly jettison those players to avoid paying them their true worth on the market. As Review-Journal columnist Ed Graney explained, when Fisher’s A’s have experienced success, the response has been to break down the team and sell off the parts. Graney concluded: “John Fisher is an owner with deep, deep pockets who (incredibly) has always acted in a way that he can’t afford to hand out exorbitant contracts to his best players. About him, an overwhelmingly popular opinion is that he simply doesn’t want to.”
Why do this? Wouldn’t a competitive team generate more revenue? In Major League Baseball, there is a revenue sharing agreement among the franchises, intended to help smaller markets field competitive teams. Fisher uses revenue sharing, and dumping talent, to be one of the most profitable owners in baseball. From the New York Post:

At least a few rival MLB club owners are annoyed at the Athletics for conducting a major fire sale to enhance their bottom line soon after being added as a new revenue-sharing recipient in a vote by owners. “The idea of revenue sharing is not to make money, it’s to field a competitive team,” one rival owner complained Thursday during the owners’ meetings at MLB headquarters in Midtown. “That money is supposed to go toward player salaries. [The A’s] took the money and put it in their pocket.” Yet another owner, also upset that the A’s didn’t use the money to buy new players, but instead did the opposite and sold three major stars and drastically cut their payroll, referred to the franchise generally as “a mess.”

Fisher will not fund a competitive team in Las Vegas if we give him a stadium handout. That would destroy his very profitable business strategy. Why would he do that? The payroll of the Las Vegas A’s will be 30th out of 30 MLB teams, just like the Oakland A’s.
5. History Repeating: Quakes Publicly Funded Stadium
There seems to be some hopeful thinking that if we give John Fisher a stadium handout, he will increase the A’s payroll to become more competitive. A’s President Dave Kaval stirred excitement when he insinuated that the franchise would bankroll a World Series championship team with a new stadium in Las Vegas. “But with more revenues, we want to turn a playoff team into a World Series team. That’s why we’re fighting so hard for a new stadium, whether it’s in Las Vegas or Oakland,” Kaval told the Review-Journal.
Many people, including our elected officials, want to believe this, in good faith. It would be awesome to have a Las Vegas MLB franchise win a World Series!
This isn’t Fisher’s first rodeo with a publicly funded stadium. Fisher is also the owner of the San Jose Quakes of Major League Soccer. From an Associated Press article in the May 25, 2006 Salinas Californian on public financing for a new Quakes stadium: “The Quakes won MLS championships in 2001 and 2003 led by former star forward Landon Donovan but attendance slid to an average of just 13,037 fans last season.” Sound familiar?
So what happened? Did Fisher increase player payroll once he obtained his publicly financed soccer stadium?
From the San Jose Mercury News:

Out of the 29 MLS teams, the Earthquakes rank 21st in guaranteed player compensation and base salary, both on a per-player and teamwide basis. The Earthquakes’ average salary came in at $434,079, nearly $100,000 lower than the overall average salary for an MLS player ($530,467). San Jose’s total spending ($13.022 million) comes in at more than $2.8 million below the average team spending across the league (15.822 million). It’s a continued trend for the Quakes, even after they moved into the state-of-the-art PayPal Park in 2015. The Earthquakes have consistently ranked in the bottom half of the league in spending, per Spotrac, even as the MLS has continued to add new expansion teams over the years. Earthquakes spending rank in MLS by year · 2015 (20 teams) — 15th · 2016 (20 teams) — 11th · 2017 (22 teams) — 16th · 2018 (23 teams) — 19th · 2019 (24 teams) — 19th · 2020 (26 teams) — 17th · 2021 (27 teams) — 24th · 2022 (28 teams) — 22nd · 2023 (29 teams) — 21st That has been reflected in on-field results, too. Since the Earthquakes moved into their new home, they have never finished a season with more wins than losses — the closest they came was in that first year, at 13 wins, 13 losses and eight draws.

Nevada should expect Fisher to act in the future as he has in the past. His business strategy is clear: spend as little as possible on player payroll regardless of venue. If Nevada gives Fisher a handout, nobody — nobody — can act surprised when his miserly payroll does not change.
The Raiders and A’s shared the Oakland Coliseum for decades. Aces and Raiders owner Mark Davis is very familiar with what it means to “partner” with John Fisher. Davis did not hold back when he spoke with the Review-Journal:

“I won’t forget what they did to us in Oakland. They squatted on a lease for 10 years and made it impossible for us to build on that stadium,” the Raiders owner said in a phone chat Thursday afternoon, referring to the stadium the A’s and Raiders once shared, the Oakland Coliseum. “They were looking for a stadium. We were looking for a stadium. They didn’t want to build a stadium, and then went ahead and signed a 10-year lease with the city of Oakland and said, ‘We’re the base team.’” … Davis was asked if he could envision an environment where the Silver and Black would cross-promote with the green-and-gold Las Vegas Athletics. “Not with that management group,” Davis said. “I just have, again, a lot of personal animosity toward the front office. But with a new management group? Absolutely.”

Mark Davis did business with John Fisher for decades. Davis knows Fisher. Nobody in Nevada has done business with Fisher as much as Davis. Davis’ reaction to Fisher, basically unfiltered instinctual revulsion, should be a massive red flag to our elected leaders who are being plied with sweet nothings by Fisher’s hired guns.
Sources:
“A’s Stadium Math Doesn’t Add Up.” The Nevada Independent, May 30, 2023. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/as-stadium-math-doesnt-add-up.
Graney, Ed. “Graney: A’s Penny-Pinching a Reason for Las Vegas to Reassess.” Journal, March 18, 2022. https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/sports-columns/ed-graney/graney-as-penny-pinching-a-reason-for-las-vegas-to-reassess-2547852/.
Gutierrez, Ana. “Nevada Ranks as the Second Least Educated State in America.” KLAS, February 17, 2022. https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/nevada-ranks-as-the-second-least-educated-state-in-america/.
Jenkins, Bruce. “MLB Has Punished Other Owners. Why Is A’s John Fisher Getting a Pass?” San Francisco Chronicle, June 3, 2023. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/jenkins/article/john-fisher-mlb-oakland-18130516.php.
Katsilometes, John. “Raiders Owner Rips Oakland Athletics’ Likely Move to Las Vegas.” Journal, April 27, 2023. https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/entertainment-columns/kats/raiders-owner-rips-oakland-athletics-likely-move-to-las-vegas-2765229/?xxyy.
Lacques, Gabe. “Why A’s Las Vegas Stadium Gambit May Be a Losing Bet: ‘It’s Just Nonsense.’” USA Today, June 1, 2023. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/athletics/2023/06/01/oakland-as-move-las-vegas-stadium-gambit-losing-bet/70277528007/.
Lozito, Nick. “‘this Is Not Our Fault:’ Oakland A’s Fans Are Defending Their Image.” The Oaklandside, May 5, 2023. https://oaklandside.org/2023/05/01/oakland-athletics-leaving-las-vegas-john-fisher-dave-kaval-fans/.
“MLB 2023 Payroll Tracker.” Spotrac.com. Accessed June 3, 2023. https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/payroll/.
Oakland Athletics made over $60 million in 2023 - Sports Illustrated ... Accessed June 4, 2023. https://www.si.com/mlb/athletics/news/oakland-athletics-made-over-60-million-in-2023.
Shea, John. “Don’t Believe John Fisher’s Propaganda: A’s Fans Are the Best in Baseball.” San Francisco Chronicle, June 1, 2023. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/athletics/article/oakland-a-s-fans-aren-t-reason-team-las-vegas-18126429.php.
Simon, Alex. “Would New Oakland A’s Ballpark Lead to More Spending? John Fisher’s Other Team Shows That May Not Be the Case.” The Mercury News, May 17, 2023. https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/05/16/would-new-oakland-as-ballpark-lead-to-more-spending-john-fishers-other-team-shows-that-may-not-be-the-case/.
Wootton-Greener, Julie. “Las Vegas Area Schools Ranked Second-Worst in Nation for Quality.” Journal, December 9, 2021. https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/education/las-vegas-area-schools-ranked-second-worst-in-nation-for-quality-2493177/.

Hey Everybody!!!
I just want to keep you in the loop on what’s going on with Oakland A’s owner John Fisher’s request to have the Nevada Legislature give him up to $380 million in public funds for a new stadium. The Legislative session ENDS MONDAY, which means that they will ram this through very quickly in the next 48 hours or so or call a special session.
NOW IS THE TIME FOR YOU TO SPEAK OUT!!!! I have put together a fairly well-documented argument below demonstrating that this is a bad deal and Fisher is a terrible partner. Please share this post and information as widely as you can! Most importantly, contact members of the Legislature and BE HEARD!!! Be sure to tell them that you live in Nevada!!!
Contact your Assemblyperson and State Senator!!
Assembly contact info: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/LegislatoA/Assembly/Current
State Senate Contact info: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/LegislatoA/Senate/Current
If you would like, you could use or modify this sample letter which contains URL links supporting the claims.

Dear Senator or Assemblyperson [Last Name],
I am writing to express my strong opposition to the proposed public funding for John Fisher's baseball stadium in Nevada. I believe this project should be stopped for several reasons:
Lack of transparency: Fisher and his team deliberately released funding details at the last minute and scheduled the only public hearing on Memorial Day evening, during a Golden Knights playoff game, limiting public awareness and participation. This is a shameful subversion of democracy and I hope you had no part in it.
Neglected education system: Nevada ranks 49th out of 50 in educational attainment. Our focus should be on improving public schools, not funding a billionaire's stadium.
Unrealistic economic projections: Expert analysis discredits the claim that the stadium will attract an additional 400,000 tourists, which, even if true, would only be a 1% increase on an annual basis. A Stanford economics professor expressed his belief that Fisher’s Stadium will result in the equivalent of a few hundred, permanent, long-term jobs. Fisher’s economic projections are detached from reality and unreliable.
Fisher's history: His track record with the San Jose Quakes, another publicly funded stadium venture, raises concerns about his commitment to investing in player payroll and creating a competitive team. Fisher owns the Quakes. After he was given a public handout for a stadium, he did not change or competitively fund his soccer team.
Troubled partnerships: Mark Davis of the Raiders, who shared the Oakland Coliseum with the A’s, has expressed frustration with Fisher's management group. MLB owners are also frustrated by doing business with Fisher. Nevada should expect to have the same experience if we proceed.
I urge you to oppose public funding for John Fisher's stadium. Let's prioritize transparency, education, and responsible use of public funds for the benefit of all Nevada residents.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. Please consider my perspective as you make your decision. Should you require further information or have any questions, I am available to discuss this issue.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]

Feel free to modify, expand or use as-is. You can also write your own letter too. I'm just trying to make this as easy as possible for everyone so that we are HEARD!
TLDR Bullet Points For Big Argument Below:

• Oakland A’s owner John Fisher, and team President Dave Kaval, strategically released details about stadium funding to minimize public awareness and participation. They released the legislation on Friday of Memorial Day weekend and the only public hearing was on Memorial Day during the Golden Knights playoff game.
• Fisher and Kaval failed to even show up at the Memorial Day hearing, demonstrating a lack of accountability and a disregard for public concerns. They have never publicly answered any questions.
• The prioritization of funding for a sports stadium over public education in Nevada, particularly the Clark County School District, is concerning.
• Economic projections presented by Fisher's lobbyists are questionable and disconnected from reality, as experts have pointed out.
• Fisher's history with the San Jose Quakes of Major League Soccer raises doubts about his commitment to investing in a competitive team with public funds.
• The low payroll of the A's compared to other MLB teams suggests a strategy of minimizing expenses for greater profitability.
• Mark Davis, owner of the Raiders and A's shared the Oakland Coliseum, expressed personal animosity towards Fisher and his management approach. Other MLB owners have expressed similar frustration about doing business with Fisher.
• Elected leaders should consider these concerns and prioritize the needs of the community over the interests of wealthy individuals.

PUBLIC FUNDING FOR JOHN FISHER’S STADIUM MUST BE STOPPED!!!!
1. They Don’t Want to Hear From You
Fisher and Kaval strategically waited until the 11th hour to release details about the handout. From USA Today:

The A’s, their cadre of lobbyists in Nevada and friendly politicians and tourist officials are doing their best to hide the sausage, introducing, finally, legislation for state funding of myriad projects on the Friday night of a holiday weekend, and then offering public discussion on the evening of Memorial Day.
Pretty slick! And it sounds like Gov. Joe Lombardo’s signature would be waiting.

The only public hearing on giving away hundreds of millions of dollars occurred on Memorial Day. And not just on Memorial Day — it was in the evening during Game Six of the Western Conference Finals where the Golden Knights punched their tickets to the Stanley Cup Finals. A hearing at 4:00 AM on Christmas morning would have received a higher profile and greater public scrutiny.
They didn’t want you to know about the hearing and your opportunity to be heard. And if, by chance you did hear about it, they didn’t want you to be able to show up and be heard. They are not very subtle about their preference to not hear from you, the unwashed masses.
Guess who else wasn’t there? A’s owner John Fisher and President Dave Kaval. I am not making this up. They didn’t bother to show up to the Memorial Day hearing. They want us to give them hundreds of millions of dollars, but couldn’t be bothered to show up at the hearing and answer questions themselves? Where were they Monday night? What was so important they couldn’t be bothered to show up for a public hearing to answer questions in public? Fisher and his army of lobbyists have had weeks to meet privately with lawmakers behind closed doors. Are you telling me Fisher couldn’t give us regular folks two hours in public?
2. What Are Our Priorities?
There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Nevada, and in particular the Clark County School District, fail to provide adequate public education. Nevada ranks 49th out of 50 for educational attainment. Of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, Las Vegas ranks second worst for schools. This is unacceptable, yet real education reform is never a priority for the same politicians who are willing to pull the Memorial Day/Stanley Cup Playoff hearing shenanigans for Fisher.
If our elected officials can turn on a dime to hand out hundreds of millions of dollars to a billionaire for a sports stadium, why can’t they act with similar urgency for our disastrous public school system?
Our failed public schools, especially CCSD, are the most significant impediment to economic growth and diversification. The number one reason companies and individuals are reluctant to relocate to Las Vegas are our terrible public schools. If we want to create economic growth, we need to fund and fix our public schools, not build another billionaire a sports stadium.
3. The Numbers Don’t Make Sense. They’re Basically Fraud.
Whenever a billionaire asks the public to finance his stadium, the ask is always accompanied by a series of fantastical economic projections. If you watched the Memorial Day/Stanley Cup Playoff hearing, you saw a powerpoint presentation made by Fisher’s hired lobbyists. The numbers presented by Fisher’s lobbyists aren’t simply slightly embellished, they are disconnected from reality.
First, there is the claim that Fisher’s publicly funded stadium will bring an additional 400,000 tourists. John Mehaffey breaks down this non-sensical claim in the Nevada Independent:

The 400,000 number seems inflated to me. The A’s host 81 baseball games per year. This projection assumes 4,938 tourists at each game that would otherwise not be in Las Vegas.
Considering only one American League market is within a reasonable driving distance, most of these tourists would fly to see their home team. Many or most of these tourists would go to two or three games in a series to justify this travel.
If the average number is two games, that puts 9,877 visitors in the stadium per home game. If those fans go to an entire three-game series, that number is 14,815. If the 1.8 million locals attendance prediction is accurate, and visiting fans tend to go to a series as opposed to just one game, the A’s project that they will sell out the stadium's 35,000-seat capacity every home game. If visitors go to only two games, that is 90 percent of capacity.
That is a bold projection for a team that was last in attendance in 2022 and at the bottom so far in 2023, especially since no MLB team comes close to selling out all its home games.
The lack of flights makes 400,000 new visitors seem impossible
Most teams that would visit the Las Vegas A’s stadium are in the American League. Most are in the east where nonstop flights to Las Vegas are scarce. For example, I found five or fewer nonstop flights per day from six of the other 14 American League cities.
Four of those six teams had home stadium attendance below 20,000 per game in 2022. It’s hard to imagine that 10,000 or 15,000 fans will fly across the country for a series when that is around the average attendance for the 81 home games in their own cities.
Some displaced fans may be within driving distance, but the point is one that needs to be considered. Las Vegas would need dozens of flights per series that don’t exist to accommodate this prediction.

Mehaffey also points out that Miami, which recently built a publicly financed stadium, also has 40 million visitors a year, just like Las Vegas. However, the Miami metro is substantially larger than Las Vegas. “In 2022, the Miami Marlins averaged 11,204 per game. A market with a much larger metro population that posts similar tourism numbers does not come close to the A’s projections. There is no reason to think Las Vegas will be different.”
Stanford economics professor Roger Noll agrees with Mehaffey that the attendance numbers Fisher projects are not credible. From USA Today:

“Baseball is different than the NFL,” Roger Noll, professor of economics emeritus at Stanford University, tells USA TODAY Sports. “This notion that of those 162 baseball games, I've got to see those three that are between the A's and the Royals in Las Vegas - it's just nonsense, right? It's not true, it's not going to happen.
“That's the fundamental reason why economists, when they do research on the impact of sports teams, typically find that the effect on local incomes and employment is slightly negative.”

But what about job creation?

Noll says the hours that stadium workers put in – for 81 games a year – computes to roughly 15% of a full-time job.
“So the 500 people who work at the stadium on game day, you got to multiply that by .15 to get the number of full-time equivalent jobs, which means it's less than 100. Wow,” says Noll. “You know, $1.5 billion to create less than 100 jobs, right? Wow.”

4. Grossly Underfunded Payroll
The total payroll for the 2023 A’s is just $59,630,474, just 37% of the MLB average payroll of $116,112,414 and just 17% of the highest-spending New York Mets ($345,474,042). To provide context, the highest paid players in the league, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, will each make $43,333,333. Verlander’s salary, by itself, is 72% of the entire A’s roster!
This meager spending is by choice, not necessity. It’s a strategy that works. From Sports Illustrated:

The A's were a top-5 team in 2022.
Not on the field. The A's finished with a 60-102 record, second-worst only ahead of the Washington Nationals. On the spreadsheets though, they netted $62.2 million according to a report from Forbes. The only teams they finished behind were the revamped Seattle Mariners who made the playoffs for the first time in two decades, the San Francisco Giants, the Boston Red Sox, and the Baltimore Orioles who had a Mariners-esque upswing and an A's-esque payroll.

When the A’s do develop talent, they quickly jettison those players to avoid paying them their true worth on the market. As Review-Journal columnist Ed Graney explained, when Fisher’s A’s have experienced success, the response has been to break down the team and sell off the parts. Graney concluded: “John Fisher is an owner with deep, deep pockets who (incredibly) has always acted in a way that he can’t afford to hand out exorbitant contracts to his best players. About him, an overwhelmingly popular opinion is that he simply doesn’t want to.”
Why do this? Wouldn’t a competitive team generate more revenue? In Major League Baseball, there is a revenue sharing agreement among the franchises, intended to help smaller markets field competitive teams. Fisher uses revenue sharing, and dumping talent, to be one of the most profitable owners in baseball. From the New York Post:

At least a few rival MLB club owners are annoyed at the Athletics for conducting a major fire sale to enhance their bottom line soon after being added as a new revenue-sharing recipient in a vote by owners.
“The idea of revenue sharing is not to make money, it’s to field a competitive team,” one rival owner complained Thursday during the owners’ meetings at MLB headquarters in Midtown. “That money is supposed to go toward player salaries. [The A’s] took the money and put it in their pocket.”
Yet another owner, also upset that the A’s didn’t use the money to buy new players, but instead did the opposite and sold three major stars and drastically cut their payroll, referred to the franchise generally as “a mess.”

Fisher will not fund a competitive team in Las Vegas if we give him a stadium handout. That would destroy his very profitable business strategy. Why would he do that? The payroll of the Las Vegas A’s will be 30th out of 30 MLB teams, just like the Oakland A’s.
5. History Repeating: Quakes Publicly Funded Stadium
There seems to be some hopeful thinking that if we give John Fisher a stadium handout, he will increase the A’s payroll to become more competitive. A’s President Dave Kaval stirred excitement when he insinuated that the franchise would bankroll a World Series championship team with a new stadium in Las Vegas. “But with more revenues, we want to turn a playoff team into a World Series team. That’s why we’re fighting so hard for a new stadium, whether it’s in Las Vegas or Oakland,” Kaval told the Review-Journal.
Many people, including our elected officials, want to believe this, in good faith. It would be awesome to have a Las Vegas MLB franchise win a World Series!
This isn’t Fisher’s first rodeo with a publicly funded stadium. Fisher is also the owner of the San Jose Quakes of Major League Soccer. From an Associated Press article in the May 25, 2006 Salinas Californian on public financing for a new Quakes stadium: “The Quakes won MLS championships in 2001 and 2003 led by former star forward Landon Donovan but attendance slid to an average of just 13,037 fans last season.” Sound familiar?
So what happened? Did Fisher increase player payroll once he obtained his publicly financed soccer stadium?
From the San Jose Mercury News:

Out of the 29 MLS teams, the Earthquakes rank 21st in guaranteed player compensation and base salary, both on a per-player and teamwide basis.
The Earthquakes’ average salary came in at $434,079, nearly $100,000 lower than the overall average salary for an MLS player ($530,467). San Jose’s total spending ($13.022 million) comes in at more than $2.8 million below the average team spending across the league (15.822 million).
It’s a continued trend for the Quakes, even after they moved into the state-of-the-art PayPal Park in 2015. The Earthquakes have consistently ranked in the bottom half of the league in spending, per Spotrac, even as the MLS has continued to add new expansion teams over the years.
Earthquakes spending rank in MLS by year
· 2015 (20 teams) — 15th
· 2016 (20 teams) — 11th
· 2017 (22 teams) — 16th
· 2018 (23 teams) — 19th
· 2019 (24 teams) — 19th
· 2020 (26 teams) — 17th
· 2021 (27 teams) — 24th
· 2022 (28 teams) — 22nd
· 2023 (29 teams) — 21st
That has been reflected in on-field results, too. Since the Earthquakes moved into their new home, they have never finished a season with more wins than losses — the closest they came was in that first year, at 13 wins, 13 losses and eight draws.

Nevada should expect Fisher to act in the future as he has in the past. His business strategy is clear: spend as little as possible on player payroll regardless of venue. If Nevada gives Fisher a handout, nobody — nobody — can act surprised when his miserly payroll does not change.
The Raiders and A’s shared the Oakland Coliseum for decades. Aces and Raiders owner Mark Davis is very familiar with what it means to “partner” with John Fisher. Davis did not hold back when he spoke with the Review-Journal:

“I won’t forget what they did to us in Oakland. They squatted on a lease for 10 years and made it impossible for us to build on that stadium,” the Raiders owner said in a phone chat Thursday afternoon, referring to the stadium the A’s and Raiders once shared, the Oakland Coliseum.
“They were looking for a stadium. We were looking for a stadium. They didn’t want to build a stadium, and then went ahead and signed a 10-year lease with the city of Oakland and said, ‘We’re the base team.’”
…
Davis was asked if he could envision an environment where the Silver and Black would cross-promote with the green-and-gold Las Vegas Athletics.
“Not with that management group,” Davis said. “I just have, again, a lot of personal animosity toward the front office. But with a new management group? Absolutely.”

Mark Davis did business with John Fisher for decades. Davis knows Fisher. Nobody in Nevada has done business with Fisher as much as Davis. Davis’ reaction to Fisher, basically unfiltered instinctual revulsion, should be a massive red flag to our elected leaders who are being plied with sweet nothings by Fisher’s hired guns.
Sources:
“A’s Stadium Math Doesn’t Add Up.” The Nevada Independent, May 30, 2023. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/as-stadium-math-doesnt-add-up.
Graney, Ed. “Graney: A’s Penny-Pinching a Reason for Las Vegas to Reassess.” Journal, March 18, 2022. https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/sports-columns/ed-graney/graney-as-penny-pinching-a-reason-for-las-vegas-to-reassess-2547852/.
Gutierrez, Ana. “Nevada Ranks as the Second Least Educated State in America.” KLAS, February 17, 2022. https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/nevada-ranks-as-the-second-least-educated-state-in-america/.
Jenkins, Bruce. “MLB Has Punished Other Owners. Why Is A’s John Fisher Getting a Pass?” San Francisco Chronicle, June 3, 2023. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/jenkins/article/john-fisher-mlb-oakland-18130516.php.
Katsilometes, John. “Raiders Owner Rips Oakland Athletics’ Likely Move to Las Vegas.” Journal, April 27, 2023. https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/entertainment-columns/kats/raiders-owner-rips-oakland-athletics-likely-move-to-las-vegas-2765229/?xxyy.
Lacques, Gabe. “Why A’s Las Vegas Stadium Gambit May Be a Losing Bet: ‘It’s Just Nonsense.’” USA Today, June 1, 2023. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/athletics/2023/06/01/oakland-as-move-las-vegas-stadium-gambit-losing-bet/70277528007/.
Lozito, Nick. “‘this Is Not Our Fault:’ Oakland A’s Fans Are Defending Their Image.” The Oaklandside, May 5, 2023. https://oaklandside.org/2023/05/01/oakland-athletics-leaving-las-vegas-john-fisher-dave-kaval-fans/.
“MLB 2023 Payroll Tracker.” Spotrac.com. Accessed June 3, 2023. https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/payroll/.
Oakland Athletics made over $60 million in 2023 - Sports Illustrated ... Accessed June 4, 2023. https://www.si.com/mlb/athletics/news/oakland-athletics-made-over-60-million-in-2023.
Shea, John. “Don’t Believe John Fisher’s Propaganda: A’s Fans Are the Best in Baseball.” San Francisco Chronicle, June 1, 2023. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/athletics/article/oakland-a-s-fans-aren-t-reason-team-las-vegas-18126429.php.
Simon, Alex. “Would New Oakland A’s Ballpark Lead to More Spending? John Fisher’s Other Team Shows That May Not Be the Case.” The Mercury News, May 17, 2023. https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/05/16/would-new-oakland-as-ballpark-lead-to-more-spending-john-fishers-other-team-shows-that-may-not-be-the-case/.
Wootton-Greener, Julie. “Las Vegas Area Schools Ranked Second-Worst in Nation for Quality.” Journal, December 9, 2021. https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/education/las-vegas-area-schools-ranked-second-worst-in-nation-for-quality-2493177/.

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