Let's do business

I watched an interview with Paul Krugman. He is an economist that has been the biggest proponent of the stimulus package. He was asked how well it was working and he acknowledged that it wasn’t working that well because they hadn’t done enough. This sent a chill up my spine. I am becoming increasingly more concerned that government intervention whether it is picking the winners in the automotive manufacturers buyout, or closer to home Rio Nuevo is usually not productive. I toured the Fox Theatre this morning. It has been beautifully redone at a price tag of 13 million dollars. The money came from Rio Nuevo. The director explained that after the initial opening of the theatre they had to be taken over by the Tucson Convention Center (City of Tucson) because they ran out of money. They had hired too much staff and didn’t have enough business (renting the facility). They have a budget of $400,000 per year and they have a loan of 5.5 million owed to Rio Nuevo (I guess the rest of the 13 million is forgiven). Considering the staffing, utilities and maintenance of the facility I don’t see how they can service the loan (they would need $500,000 a year to do that), so that loan won’t be paid back. The Fox was renovated to be the “jewel” of downtown redevelopment. It was the “if we build it they will come” type of proposition. Seems like I heard the same thing about Tucson Electric Park. The government needs to get out of the business of business (being a developer or landlord) and free up business to do what we do best. I had to do ownership reports for the FCC this week. In the past all we had to do is write a letter and say nothing had changed from our original ownership report. Now they have decided it is necessary for us to do the reports anew. Because of the number of radio stations we own and the different corporations I had to do 8 different reports (and pay 8 fees!) that were duplicates. The time and expense of doing this exercise could have been used for something productive in our business. This does keep FCC staff employed, but is this is not productive employment. Government exists because we pay taxes. If they got out of our way we could be more productive. I am reminded of the movie Braveheart Mel Gibsons' character William Wallace screamed "freedom". That note is ringing clearly now. Give us the freedom to do business!