Double Taxation Without Representation

As anyone who's reading this knows, I love watching basketball (almost as much as playing it). TNT carries a lot of NBA games, including two every Thursday night, with the presenting sponsor often being the Marines. This raises a few questions for me, most notably: what the hell are the Marines doing sponsoring anything? It strikes me as a strange use of defense funds compared to...I don't know...guns?!

Don't get me wrong, I understand how they could benefit - think people who watch basketball are the target market, viewers see sponsorship and sign up, more people enlisted - but that still doesn't offset the cost. Sports advertising is expensive, and since the Marines certainly aren't a profit center, it's not like each new enlistee generates additional income. In fact, doesn't a bigger Marine Corps cost more money to support? Essentially they're spending money to allow themselves to spend more money. Now that's the kind of organization I wanna do business with!

Also, this means I'm paying twice for every game I watch. There's the obvious cable bill expense since TNT isn't a broadcast channel (although that feels like it's worth every penny after the first time Charles Barkley says "terrrible"). Then there's the more obscure cost of our tax dollars being spent on defense funding, which apparently gets funneled to TNT's NBA games. I'm all about shelling out a little extra for quality, but once is enough. Budweiser's probably got a few bucks lying around that they could throw TNT's way.

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