Special to the Star-Telegram
When exactly did cities cease to be
cities and become taxpayer-subsidized holding companies?
It used to be that cities provided
services that couldn't be provided any other way -- infrastructure stuff like
roads and sewers and asphalt traffic humps with reflectors and ziggy lines. Now
they think they have to build hotels.
Fort Worth spent 75 million tax bucks to
expand the taxpayer-owned convention center to attract more conventioneers and
then discovered that it didn't have enough hotel rooms to put them in. So now
the city wants to build a 600-room, $120 million taxpayer-funded hotel.
Back in 2002, City Manager Gary Jackson
and a posse of hired consulting guns claimed that a publicly owned hotel would
more than pay for itself by spawning additional convention business. Convention
business for downtown businesses, that is.
How many plungers will Paulie the Plumber
in Poly sell to International Curtain Rod Designers conventioneers? How many
National Macaroni Art Convention attendees will hop The T to Bubba's Beach
Street Beer & Bar-B-Q? How many Bean Sprout Growers Association members will
visit Hannah's Hair Hut in Hulen Heights?
But never mind that. Jackson had a good
feeling. "I feel confident that this is a safe project," he reassured
us.
The feel-good plan was to finance the
project by hawking certificates of obligation, which -- and this may explain the
feel-good part -- do not require voter approval.
One person who didn't feel good was Sam
Staley, a policy analyst with the libertarian Reason Foundation. In 2002 he
said, "The truth is, the private sector won't touch this with a 10-foot
pole because they don't think it will be a very good deal."
Jackson may have thought that his
confident feelings trumped the private sector's 10-foot pole, but many residents
disagreed. A 16,000-signature petition drive demanded a public vote on the
issue. Perhaps amid fears that Paulie in Poly and Beach Street Bubba might be
inclined to vote for the 10-foot pole rather than Jackson's feelings, the plan
was quickly quashed.
The current scheme is to hoist the hotel
on the back of revenue bonds, which don't use taxpayer plunder to repay debt.
The bonds are repaid by taxes levied against the new hotel's direct competitors
-- private hotels and motels -- and from the project's future profits.
Future profits?
The newly renovated convention center and
the new hotel, along with the inevitable taxpayer-provided parking garage for
the new hotel, must compete for convention business with a hundred other cities
that litter the landscape with their own convention centers and luxury hotels
and parking garages. And some of that landscape is very close to home.
Like Dallas. Big D yearns to tap its own
taxpayers for a luxury hotel next door to its own convention center.
Meanwhile, right up the street on the
shores of Lake Grapevine, poised to open in April, is the privately financed,
privately built and privately operated Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention
Center -- 400,000 square feet of meeting and convention space and 1,511 luxury
hotel rooms.
And let's not forget Jerry Jones. The
newest member of the Forbes billionaire club and King of the Cowboys
desperately wants to build a palatial stadium complex for his millionaire
football players that will include -- guess what?! -- a convention center and
luxury hotel.
So what if, with all this competition
going around, the Grandiose Fort Worth Convention Center Luxury Hotel and
Money-Generator for Cowtown commercial concerns can't turn a profit?
Who makes up the shortfall? The city. And
where does the city get its shortfall money? From us -- the taxpayers.
Business people make business decisions.
Politicians make political decisions. Put politicians in charge of a business,
and they still will make political decisions. It's their nature.
Politicians don't operate on a
profit-and-loss basis -- they operate on a tax-and-spend basis, no matter what
they say about profits. In short, beware of visionaries bearing "the vision
thing." Inevitably, they expect their grandiose gambits to be subsidized by
taxpayers.
It's time to seriously consider the
libertarian view: De-politicize business and de-business politics.
The city should get out of the convention
center business and the hotel business by privatizing both and go back to what
it's supposed to do: Build stuff like roads and sewers and asphalt traffic humps
with reflectors and ziggy lines.
And maybe fill a few potholes.
Garry
Reed, a member of the Star-Telegram's community columnist panel, is a longtime
libertarian and Fort Worth resident. www.freecannon.com
Special to the Star-Telegram
My eyes were grazing the
open pages of Reason, a libertarian 'zine, when they stopped to chew on
these words, taken from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
"Police officials in
Bel-Ridge, Mo., say department officials are pressuring them to spend less time
catching robbers and more time writing tickets.
" 'When it comes down
to it, money is what counts,' says a department memo obtained by the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch. 'State cases do not generate money for the department.
Municipal tickets do.' "
Bel-Ridge, Mo., eh? The
same article could have been written about almost any community in America --
including Fort Worth.
Fort Worth tax collectors,
you see, have a gold mine in the Mixmaster.
For those of you new to
the Metroplex (maybe you've recently moved here from Bel-Ridge) the Mixmaster is
the name of the Gordian knot of freeway lanes and ramps and flyovers and
underpasses and transition roads that swallows up a huge hunk of downtown
Cowtown real estate.
The pockets of gold being
worked by the city are located in the pants and purses of Fort Worth drivers.
The method of mining the gold is not panning or sluicing but issuing speeding
tickets. The miners are city police officers, who are reduced to serving as
glorified tax collectors in uniforms.
If ever there was a speed
trap, the Mixmaster is it. I know, because I drive the gantlet of Radar Rangers
every workday morning. This charge, therefore, is not based on statistics or
interviews with facile city officials. It's based on direct observation.
My morning commute is a
straight-line westward shot on Interstate 30. For miles, the speed limit is 60.
Then, almost without warning, it's 50.
Yes, there's a
standard-sized REDUCED SPEED sign. Yes, there's a standard-sized 50 MPH sign.
It's not that the signage is hidden -- it's just "well-placed,"
interspersed with off ramps where drivers need to be watching one another, not
searching for signs.
Driving through the
predawn Mixmaster is a surreal deal. It has the feel of an undulating stretch of
Serengeti Plain, with herds of zebra and antelope and wildebeest hoofing across
the landscape where lions suddenly leap from their hiding places to pounce on
unsuspecting individuals.
I know how the wildebeest
feel.
I slow to below 50 at the
sight of flashing blue and red on my right: a cruiser with its prey pinned to
the highway shoulder. More colors glint in my periphery from the left as a white
predator moves in for the kill, grill snapping at the quarry's rear bumper,
separating it from the herd.
Those of us who were
spared keep moving, rolling silently, watching warily every dip, curve and
shadow ahead.
The gold extractions are
not limited to the westbound lanes. According to drivers' sightings on SpeedTrap
Exchange (www.speedtrap.org),
they're everywhere:
• I-30 east- or
westbound at the I-35W bridge.
• I-35W north and south
at the I-30 ramps.
• The east and west
sides of I-30 between I-35W and Summit Avenue.
• The Cherry Street exit
from I-30 eastbound.
Nor, it seems, do the
gold-diggers constrain themselves to the Mixmaster. At last look, SpeedTrap
Exchange exposed 29 speed traps within the Fort Worth city limits alone.
Enjoy these actual driver
comments from SpeedTrap Exchange:
"They line one guy on
a bridge and he shoots everyone and then his buddies come after you (about 12
motorcycle cops.)"
"I don't know what or whom they are trying to protect, except maybe revenues for city hall."
"We should call them
the Ft. Worth Tax Collectors."
"It's a stinkin'
four-lane freeway and the speed limit is 50."
Police departments across
America have lost their way. Created to protect the public, the only thing they
protect today is their own budgets.
Traffic fines are just an
alternate means of mining the seams of gold from our billfolds. Speed traps are
legalized highway robbery.
I'll leave you with
another kind of citation -- this one from an article by libertarian
writer/author/editor Vin Suprynowicz in which he quotes Chad Dornsife of the
Nevada chapter of the National Motorists Association:
"But enforcement of
inappropriate speed limits is big business for courts and police, of course.
'The courts live off this revenue,' Dornsife confirms. 'In Mina, halfway between
Las Vegas and Reno near Hawthorne, it turned out the judge owned the radar unit
that the county sheriff was using there.'"
They'd love these guys in
Bel-Ridge. And maybe in Fort Worth, too.
Garry
Reed, a member of the Star-Telegram's community columnist panel, is a longtime
libertarian and Fort Worth resident. www.freecannon.com
Special to the Star-Telegram
By now you've been bombarded repeatedly with reasons to vote for
one of the nation's two great Lesser Evil brand names, Republicans or Democrats.
I'd like to tell you why I'll be punching a proverbial chad for the Libertarian
label.
I still remember a mildly amusing cartoon from my youth, probably
published in the old mildly amusing Saturday Evening Post.
A citizen is standing in the lobby of the U.S. post office,
dutifully sliding his letters through different slots in a wall labeled
"Local," "State," "Out of State" and so on. Then
we're shown the other side of the wall, where all of his mail is falling from
the various slots into a single box.
This depicts American politics today. We have only one political
party, and it's a snake with two heads. Its name is Republicrat.
No matter which head gobbles the most ballots, the one on the Left
or the one on the Right, both gullets feed the same gut. The name of that gut --
the belly of the beast -- is Big Government.
Keep feeding the gut through either gullet, and Government gets
bigger -- more expensive, more intrusive, more coercive.
In my youth, I was told that Democrats believed in civil rights.
Great, I thought -- I believe in civil rights, too.
And I was told that Republicans believed in economic freedom.
Great, I thought -- I believe in economic freedom, too.
Today, the two-headed Republicratic Party believes in whatever will
get it elected. Democrats ditched civil rights for group entitlements.
Republicans dumped economic freedom for corporate welfare.
Both belly up to the pork-barrel buffet, each trying to out-pig the
other. And no matter which head controls the power, Government gets bigger --
more expensive, more intrusive, more coercive.
Whichever head bags your ballot, you'll be wasting your vote.
Neither side will give you what you want.
Think otherwise? When that major bill that you so fervently fought
for comes up for consideration, sit back and watch it get sliced and diced and
twisted and tweaked and watered down and then bulked up again with a
half-billion dollars worth of your tax bucks in the form of special-interest
pork to benefit the re-election of Republicrats.
And Government gets bigger -- more expensive, more intrusive, more
coercive.
Still insist that your snakehead is better than their snakehead?
Consider this simple story. John McCain and Russ Feingold, a
Republican head and a Democratic head, induced Congress (consisting of
Republicans and Democrats) to make a law that abridges freedom of speech.
It's called "campaign finance reform," and it stifles
political speech during the latter legs of national campaigns. The Supreme Court
upheld this law even though our Constitution states, "Congress shall make
no law … abridging the freedom of speech."
It is clear. There is no confusion. There is nothing to interpret.
Yet Congress abridged freedom of speech, and the court upheld the abridgement.
The Supremes who did this were "conservatives" and
"liberals" appointed and confirmed by members of the party you vote
for and the party you hate. Your favorite snakehead helped take away more of
your rights and freedoms and helped Government get bigger -- more expensive,
more intrusive, more coercive.
If it weren't so tragic, I'd find your devotion to partisan
politicians mildly amusing.
I still believe in civil rights and economic freedom. That's why
I'll be voting for the only U.S. party that believes in both, the only party
that consistently believes in freedom -- real freedom, not just rhetorical words
like "Government is not the solution, government is the problem"
(Ronald Reagan, Republican) or "The era of big government is over"
(Bill Clinton, Democrat).
Libertarians are clear. There is no confusion. There is nothing to
interpret. If a law extends freedom, we're for it. If not, we're not.
And, no, I won't be wasting my vote. That's because voting is not
like placing a bet at Lone Star Park. Voting is giving your sanction to someone
who represents your beliefs. The only way you can possibly waste your vote is to
give it to someone who doesn't.
If you want to waste your vote, give it to the Republicrat
snakehead of your choice. No matter what you really believe, you'll be
supporting conservative socialism or liberal socialism.
It'll all end up in the same gut anyway: Big Government's gut -- more expensive, more intrusive, more coercive.
Garry
Reed, a member of the Star-Telegram's community columnist panel, is a longtime
libertarian and Fort Worth resident. www.freecannon.com
Special to the Star-Telegram
"Libertarians are always bashing government. If it weren't for
government, we'd have nothing but chaos."
Fair enough. Maybe it's time for us libertarian types to take
another look at this government-vs.-chaos thing.
Let's say that a major component of your retirement plan is to buy
a house and have it paid off by the time you're ready to extract your nose from
the grindstone.
The idea is that you can afford to live on a reduced income sans
monthly house payments. But what if you end up sans house as well?
While your savings are being munched by the Pac-Man of inflation,
your property taxes are feeding the Hungry Hippo. Your city, county, fire,
hospital, school, parks and recreation, metro planning, special crime-fighting,
rapid transit, stadium, water, sewer, recycling and garbage collection tax
assessment boards all need money so they can hire more civil servants to figure
out more ways to tax your property until your tax bill becomes as bloated as
this sentence.
Once you retire, you'll discover that your property taxes are
higher than that first house payment you made 30 years ago. If you're lucky,
you'll be able to sell the house for enough to cover the taxes and still be able
to move into your grandson's '82 minibus.
That's economic chaos courtesy of your various friendly homegrown
governments.
Of course, the wrecking ball of eminent domain could get you first.
"Eminent domain" is a bureaucratic legal term that means "We can
take any house anywhere any time and give you whatever price we say is
fair."
This ain't your grandfather's eminent domain, which was used only
for public works like roads, sewers and various rights of way. Today it's a tool
of the infamous public-private partnership ploy.
That's where local politicians conspire with money moguls against
individual citizens to take their homes (expansion of North East Mall in Hurst,
construction of baseball and football Taj Mahals in Arlington).
Everybody has to move. Period.
But how do you box up a lifetime of memories? How do you pack the
door frame with your children's penciled-in growth marks?
Politicians take "campaign contributions" from
corporations to condemn property so they can get re-elected so they can get more
"campaign contributions" to condemn more property.
That's government property rights chaos for you.
Or would you prefer asset forfeiture? If the narcs get an anonymous
tip that might even conceivably associate you in any way with officially
disapproved chemical compounds, you're a goner.
Based solely on that suspicion -- not being charged, not being
arrested, not being convicted -- everything you own can be seized.
Your house, your cars, your furnishings, your bass boat, your
Pac-Man-nibbled retirement account, your boxer shorts with the little red hearts
and Cupids. They need to seize your property and auction it off so they can
afford to hire more cops to seize more assets.
Welcome to the government's right-to-a-fair-trial chaos.
And I haven't even gotten to the government's War on Private Health
Care, or its War Against Educational Freedom, or its War against Handguns.
But let's say you're lucky. You've somehow managed to keep your
house. And you're cozied up snug and warm in your bed. It's after midnight.
You don't know there are a dozen very large people gathered on your
front lawn, trampling your petunias. They're festooned in paramilitary Kevlar
from jack boot to tinted helmet visor, and they're stoned on adrenaline and
testosterone.
They bash in your door with a custom door-basher. They scream
letters from an alphabet-soup can like "FBI!" and "DEA!" and
"BATF!" and challenge you to the children's tag game of
"Freeze!" They point muzzles of seriously lethal weaponry in your
face.
They drag you out of bed, dressed only in your boxer shorts with
the little red hearts and Cupids, and cuff your wrists behind your back. Then
they spend the next three hours ransacking your house from soap dish to
breadbox.
Eventually, someone with keys and bad breath removes your handcuffs
with a muttered "Oops, wrong house."
It's at this precise moment that I want you to turn to your partner
in home ownership and say:
"Libertarians are always bashing government. If it weren't for
government we'd have nothing but chaos."
Garry
Reed, a member of the Star-Telegram's community columnist panel, is a longtime
libertarian and Fort Worth resident. www.freecannon.com
More print articles from the Star-Telegram and Libertarian Party News: Loose Cannon Op-Eds
And here are five really old : letters to the editor from the Star-Telegram and Dallas Morning News
