Kansas City’s elected leaders have been speaking far and wide about the GO Bond before voters on April 4. Their presentations focus on what could be done with the money, and attendees often ask about the amounts that will be spent on sidewalks, streets, and an animal shelter.
In many Eastern religions, practitioners use mantras to calm and center themselves while meditating. If the school choice movement needs a mantra right now, it just might be:
Regulating a market is not the same as regulating a monopoly.
Marketing professionals and politicians alike will tell you that framing is everything. A half-carat diamond ring looks huge if you zoom in close enough. Tom Cruise looks tall on camera. And a public policy looks successful if you focus on the benefits but not the costs.
Last fall, at the same time the University of Missouri announced the first decline in enrollment in 15 years, Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, announced record-breaking enrollment.
As someone who ran his own business for many years, I am aware of the difference between cost and price, even if it is something that eludes many political leaders and more than a few businesspeople with their noses in the public trough.
Oh, Missouri lawmakers, it is me, the Ghost of a Christmas Yet-to-Come, who whispers in your ear this wintry night. I come not to frighten you (like the baleful ghost in Dickens’s tale), nor to load you down with unearned and therefore inconsequential and soon-to-be-forgotten gifts.
Planning for retirement is no small task, and when news comes that a public pension plan is in financial trouble, both plan employees and local taxpayers should be concerned, because one of the two is going to have to pick up the tab.
On November 8, Missourians sent a clear message: We want change. Republicans won every major statewide office—all of which but one had been held by Democrats. The Missouri House and Senate retained Republican supermajorities. President-elect Trump won the state by 19 points.
In 2014, Mayor Sly James said that “Now is the time to start a conversation about the appropriate level of incentives we need to grant, especially considering the impact of declining property values felt by all taxing jurisdictions during the recent economic downturn.” At the time, he suggested t
With the World Series in full swing, I’m reminded of a quote from one of my favorite sports movies, Field of Dreams: “If you build it, he will come.” I wouldn’t be surprised if these same words were in the minds of Kansas economic development officials when they successfully recruited th