Paying Businesses to Stay

I have a philosophical problem with governments using tax dollars to convince companies to stay or relocate. This article outlines Phoenix's offer to keep America West/US Airways at Sky Harbor. While I am in favor of keeping them here and I will concede that it is likely that the economic impact of the company is greater than the package, I just know the company is punking us. They have already made the decision as to where they will house their headquarters, but now they want to see what they can get.

I think the worst offender is building sport stadiums. I still cannot believe all the money spent to keep the Cardinals in Phoenix. They are the worst team (perhaps ever) in the NFL and we spent millions of dollars to keep them here. It seems that most of the time, we not only pay for the stadium, but they also raise ticket prices. Now, I could understand if we built a new stadium and we got 3000 $10 tickets per game for the people that paid for the stadium.

I think the only solution to this problem is to outlaw all states and municipalities from using this practice. What do you think?

Government egregiously seizes private property

Once again the government is using its coercive power to steal from hard working individuals everywhere. Here is the article from the Arizona Republic. Clearly there are Socialists in our midst. After all taking 1 cent for every $10 spent to build parks is just theft. Why not privatize all of the parks and let the market take care of this? I was planning on using my .001 to buy a weeks worth of starbucks this year or pay my dues to the Minute Men.

If this Ahwatukee woman wants more little league fields then she needs to figure out how to make little league profitable. Look at professional baseball, they would never ask tax payers to pay for a stadium.

Ok, seriously. These ballot elections are important and no one votes in them except me. The thoughts above are from the brain of an anti-tax zealot (or at least what I imagine an anti-tax zealot might think) right before they vote to kill this park funding. They see tax on the ballot and they reflexively vote against it. The election will be on May 20th. Please mark it on your calendar and vote. Do not let this slip by and be defeated. After all, parks are nice and improve our quality of life.