Our View

It happens rarely, so when it does, we should be effusive.

Kudos to the Sarasota City Commission — albeit without the help, not surprisingly, of Mayor Kelly Kirschner and Commissioner Suzanne Atwell. The majority nonetheless voted 3-2 Monday to sell the new Palm Avenue parking garage to private interests and get the city out of owning and leasing a shopping center/public parking garage.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

This is the best decision the commission has made in years with respect to this project. It will help the city and taxpayers avoid an array of future and inevitable boondoggles and, better yet, let private-sector experts and professionals do what the city is not intended to do.

It’s all but impossible to make an argument why any government body should own real estate, much less be in the business of retail property ownership and management. Thank goodness Commissioners Terry Turner, Richard Clapp and Fredd Atkins saw the obvious.

Next up: Commissioners should put up for sale the adjacent parcel and let the free market figure out what should go there.

+ Young candidates: Step up
With the announcement Tuesday of Mayor Kelly Kirschner not running for re-election, you can be sure the buzz is under way about who will step forward in Kirschner’s district.

Kirschner’s announcement should trigger wider discussions, too, particularly in Sarasota’s business circles.

With Kirschner bowing out and Commissioner Fredd Atkins talking retirement (he should), an opportunity arises for a new majority coalition — a coalition that would focus on economic growth.

Predictably, neighborhood agonist Susan Chapman will ignite her anti-development squad to maintain its control of City Hall. And that in itself is reason for those who want a more economically robust city to do their own candidate recruiting and take the lead in setting the agenda for the city elections next spring. Unless you have the millions of dollars that Rick Scott did for an all-out advertising blitz, it takes time and a lot of door knocking to get a message across to the voters. So the sooner a pro-growth team and agenda emerge the better.

This is an especially opportune time for the next generation — those in their 30s and 40s — to consider stepping up. Kelly Kirschner was the first of this generation to do so, but 1) Unfortunately, he was on the wrong side of most issues that were good for the economy; and 2) He found out that public service is personally costly, especially financially.

The cost factor is a huge obstacle, especially for anyone in his/her 30s and 40s to commit.

But that’s not to say it’s impossible to make it work. Others have managed. There are ways to do it, although we won’t elaborate on them here (Ask Dr. Bob Windom or Gil Waters; they know how.)

The larger point is this: Three City Commission slots will be on the ballot next March — those of Kirschner, Atkins and Commissioner Richard Clapp. If all three are replaced with candidates who see the value of economic growth, Sarasota will have a far better chance over the next four years of moving forward and upward than if the commission stays mired in the same no-growth, uninspired agenda of the sitting commission majority of Kirschner, Clapp, Atkins and Commissioner Suzanne Atwell.

This is the time to continue the Nov. 2 momentum. The city of Sarasota needs it.

+ Don’t begrudge Marina Jack
Ever since longtime businessman and Republican Sarasota Property Appraiser Bill Furst began his quest to turn Jack Graham Inc., doing business as Marina Jack, into a property taxpayer, it always has struck us as a bit odd.

We get the whole “uphold the constitution” thing and that one of Furst’s responsibilities as property appraiser is to insure as best he can the notion of property-tax “fairness.” In other words, no special breaks for special interests.

We also get that in these difficult times our government entities want to make sure they collect every dollar they are allowed to collect.

Still, it was a surprise to see Furst decide to pursue a challenge that other government officials have pursued unsuccessfully before.

Surely he knew his challenge of JGI’s tax-exempt status would result in what will be thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars of legal fees to be absorbed by taxpayers and JGI.

And let’s not forget, Furst won’t feel the effects of these legal fees the way the owners of JGI will. It’s always easier to spend other people’s money (i.e. tax dollars) than it is your own. But for JGI, whatever amount it must spend on legal fees is money that it will not put to more productive uses (i.e. upgrading its facilities to remain an attractive, income-earning asset for its shareholders and Sarasota taxpayers).

The real problem here is not that JGI is not paying property taxes. The real problem is the silly lease the city of Sarasota signed with JGI. The company pays the city 3% of annual gross receipts as rent for the next 40 years.

Indeed, don’t begrudge JGI for negotiating a great lease with the city. Its owners did what everyone does in every transaction — get the best deal for himself!

Rather than take this matter to the courts — where, in addition to legal expenses, unnecessary emotional animosities will result — this matter appears to be one where all sides could have come to a table to discuss options.

But here we are. We’ll be reading about this dispute for months, if not years. All the while, an important lesson will be lost. And that is, here is yet another example of why government entities should not be landlords or own land. Rarely do they get it right.

Our Fetish with Inflation: What Others are Saying about Dollar, Gold

Any time you start talking about money supply and the gold standard at a party, eyes glaze over and the crowd dissipates.

It’s obtuse stuff. But it has real consequences.

When the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank increases the supply of dollars in circulation, i.e. prints more money, the value and purchasing power of the dollar in our pockets falls. That’s why all of the foreign governments — and now groups of U.S. economists — are protesting Ben Bernanke’s latest move to stimulate the economy with $600 billion in new money.

Americans aren’t protesting because they don’t get it. That is, until they line up at the grocery checkout and see that what they bought last year for $100 doesn’t buy as much.

This new money, of course, has rekindled economic arguments for going back to a gold standard to stabilize the value of prices and dollars. (President Richard Nixon ended that practice in 1971, prompting Nobel winner Milton Friedman to dub Nixon as the worst president in Friedman’s lifetime on economics.)
In the two passages that follow, we have excerpts that explain 1) how the gold standard would put power back in the people and take it out of the hands of politicians; and 2) how politicians would never let gold become “money” again.

+ Gold: Power to the people
(Professor) Nouriel Roubini … listed a series of merits of gold without recognizing them as such: gold limits the flexibility and range of actions of central banks (check!); under gold, a central bank can’t “stimulate growth and manage price stability” (check!); under gold, central banks can’t provide lender of last resort support (check!); under gold, banks go belly-up rather than get bailed out (check!) …

As Murray Rothbard emphasized, the essence of the gold standard is that it puts power in the hands of the people. They are no longer dependent on the whims of central bankers, treasury officials and high rollers in money centers.

Money becomes not merely an accounting device but a real form of property like any other. It is secure, portable, universally valued and rather than falling in value, it maintains or rises in value over time.

Under a real gold standard, there is no need for a central bank, and banks themselves become like any other business, not some gigantic socialistic operation sustained by trillions in public money.
Imagine holding money and watching it grow rather than shrink in its purchasing power in terms of goods and services.

That’s what life is like under gold. Savers are rewarded rather than punished. No one uses the monetary system to rob anyone else. The government can only spend what it has and no more. Trade across borders is not thrown into constant upheaval because of a change in currency valuations.
Llewellyn Rockwell,
Ludwig von Mises Institute

+ Why gold won’t be our $$
The very concept of a “reserve currency” is fraught with danger, only too well exposed by the history of the U.S. dollar since WWII. The suggestion now — notably from China — is that no single country should have the power to produce what the world uses as its reserve currency.

Instead, this privilege should be “shared” between a group of countries or even given to an international organization (like the IMF) which is supposedly “representative” of the nations which adhere to it.

The only long-term solution to this dilemma is not a “money standard,” it is a STANDARD MONEY.

That is, a money which is uniformly used everywhere in the world. The obvious candidate for this role is a certain weight and fineness of gold as the monetary unit … (But) gold as money is incompatible with unlimited majority rule and scoffs at the idea that money is just “credit.” … Most important, (gold as money) SEVERELY curbs the power of government to interfere in the lives of its citizens.

No assembly of national “leaders” brought together to “modernize” a financial system will ever agree to its use as money. But let one nation anywhere implement it, and the lid blows off.
William A.M. Buckler,
The Privateer