Georgia’s Cobb County will reportedly lose more than $100 million in tourism revenue due to Major League Baseball’s decision to move the All-Star Game out of Atlanta over the state’s recent election law changes.
Jobs Creators Network CEO Alfredo Ortiz criticized the move by baseball officials on Monday’s “Fox & Friends,” saying the economic benefit of the game was an “opportunity” for small businesses in the area, especially those owned by minorities, to generate much-needed revenue for an already strained city economy.
“[Georgia] is barely making it out of this pandemic,” Ortiz said. “And now they’re faced, under the Biden administration, with potentially higher taxes, a higher minimum wage, more red tape and regulations, and now this.”
Ortiz added that the intense political pressure that led baseball officials to relocate the game was due to a “misrepresentation” or an “outright lie” concerning the controversial voting law recently passed in the state.
Ortiz insisted that “The bottom line is that law, it just makes it easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
He said he was dismayed that corporations and CEOs have perpetuated the “myth” that led to Major League Baseball’s decision.
Major corporations such as Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines and Uber all spoke out publicly against the law and have supported the decision by baseball officials, mostly using the same rhetoric.
“I expect that out of politicians and political talking heads and operatives, like [President] Joe Biden or [Democratic activist] Stacy Abrams, but I just don’t expect that out of our CEOs or corporations that I think should be held to a higher standard and need to be held accountable,” Ortiz said.
Even though the pullout of the game will cause economic losses to her city’s economy, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, A Democrat and contender to be Biden’s Vice Presidential nominee, backed the decision, writing on Twitter that “Just as elections have consequences, so do the actions of those who are elected.
“Unfortunately, the removal of the All-Star game from GA is likely the 1st of many dominoes to fall, until the unnecessary barriers put in place to restrict access to the ballot box are removed.”
Georgia Gov Brian Kemp, who is Republican, defended the law and rejected criticisms from both the White House and corporations, insisting that the Election Integrity Act he helped to pass simply makes it “easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
Source: Newmax
