Got $300,000 sitting around to invest in downtown real estate? Like fine old historic properties? How about the long-vacant downtown Chicago post office, once the world’s largest such facility? As the New York Times reported on Tuesday, it’ll be going up for auction on Aug. 27, and the minimum bid is $300,000. The building, constructed [...]

Who’s the smartest guy on the block? Not Bill Gates — Microsoft is the past, not the future. Not Warren Buffett — he managed to lose plenty during the world financial meltdown, even though he knew it was coming. Not Nobel laureate/New York Times columnist Paul Krugman — he writes eloquently and convincingly, but he’s [...]

“I wonder about you sometimes, Henry. You may fold under questioning.” — Joe Pesci to Ray Liotta in “Goodfellas,” 1990. Enduring myth: by consolidating city/county governments, we’ll get cheaper, more efficient service delivery.  As taxpayers, we’ll save — as residents, we’ll gain!  Everyone wins, except the greedy, dog-in-the-manger politicians and bureaucrats who have stalled such [...]

In a lengthy article in the New Yorker earlier this month, Dr. Atul Gawande pondered a single, simple health care question. Why, he wondered, is McAllen, Texas, one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country? “Only Miami — which has much higher labor and living costs — spends more per person on health [...]

Historically, local recessions have been times of ferment and change in Colorado Springs. During the 1970s, business and political leaders focused on economic development and created the Economic Development Council. One of the first such organizations in the United States, the EDC was amazingly successful in recruiting companies and creating primary jobs. The EDC’s success [...]