This “My Turn” column from Councilman Bob Littlefield appeared in last Saturday’s Scottsdale Republic. I only disagree with Bob on one point: The economic downturn wasn’t the cause of shortages in funding our “unfunded infrastructure needs.” The cause was Mayor Jim Lane and the city council not compensating for the downturn by tightening up discretionary […]
Subsidizing Failure: Lessons from Carnival Cruise Lines
Gwynn Guilford’s article yesterday on Quartz.com about Carnival Cruise Lines’ business model has some interesting parallels to recent “economic vitality” efforts here in Scottsdale. Like Carnival, the Scottsdale Tournament Players Club (a division of the Professional Golf Association) has received massive indirect government subsidies to keep them afloat (pardon the pun) and in the black. […]
Mickelson, Taxes, and New Clubhouses: Par for the Course
To follow up the article I published a few weeks ago [Scottsdale gives the PGA a Mulligan] I want to share something with you something I ran across recently. Walter Mencken writes the Almost Factual News column for the San Diego Reader weekly newspaper. Mencken has a great photo-comic strip called Bob Filner, Standup Guy, […]