Quote:
Originally Posted by combusean
People don't shoot each other here over taxes. And as I said above most of the funds to pay for it would come out of money that's already purposed to things like Spring Training and football anyway. The biggest one that would be new is transportation which has to happen anyway.
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I quote from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Field
The iissue was so controversial and divisive that in August 1997, Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox was shot and injured while leaving a county board meeting by Larry Naman, a homeless man, who attempted to argue in court that her support for the tax justified his attack. In May 1998, Naman was found guilty of attempted first-degree murder.
LOL. Only in Phoenix.
I stand by my comments. We can't even build a single 500+ foot skyscraper. Fucking Des Moines, Iowa and Mobile, Alabama have taller skyscrapers than Phoenix, yet we have more than three times the population of both of those cities
combined. We have a state capitol that is worse than perhaps 47 other state capitol buildings. We are a cheap-assed state that doesn't want to pay for anything. It took three tries to pass funding for a real mass transit system like light rail. Remember Valtrans in 1989? Went down in flames with 68% of the vote against it. Our property taxes are less than half what many other states have, yet most people here can only see as far as their pocketbook and are moaning about a piddly 2% food tax increase, even though most of them are overweight and could afford to give up those two snickers bars this would affect in a $100 grocery purchase. They'd rather have Phoenix lay off 500 cops than tax themselves eight candy bars a year for a couple of years until our sales-tax-based-economy starts coming back to life.
The sooner you realize just how tight and ignorant the voters are here, the sooner you will stop with these fantasies of Olympic glory. After all, Phoenix was the only major city that was carried by McCain and Phoenix voters have re-elected Sheriff Joe four times. I guarantee you most elderly and conservative voters here who like these folks don't like big "gummint," and sure as hell don't want those damned "Olympic whippersnappers" clogging up traffic.
Our Centennial, by the way, next year, is going to be a couple of white tents on Tempe Beach Park with the Gin Blossoms playing. Our state and local governments are nearly so dysfunctional at the moment, they are selling off their office buildings for pennies on the dollar and leasing them back, a most asinine and stupid myopic step ever taken by local governments.
--don
P.S. Atlanta is way bigger than Phoenix. Atlanta's metro population is almost 6 million, we are barely past 4 million, and their per capita income is considerably higher, resulting in a gross economic footprint that is almost twice the size of Phoenix, if not more.