San Antonio Isolationist Policies

It happened again—my computer broke. I didn’t forget about you out there and definitely still had opinions to write, but my Dell broke for the last time. I kicked it to the curb and have become a Mac user.

While my computer was breaking down, it seems like a few things in the city were breaking too.

The two leaders of our city are pushing us in a new direction of isolationism. Popular Mayor Phil Hardberger announced that San Antonio is not interested in either the Democratic or Republican National Convention in 2008, and the famous (or infamous depending on your politics) County Judge Nelson Wolff may have lost us the Florida Marlin’s bid.

Is this the new goal of San Antonio?

After years of impressive growth and expansion, we have been able to acquire a Texas A&M satellite, Washington Mutual, and a PGA golf course.

Conventions are big in San Antonio and a major source of revenue for the city.

"San Antonio is an extremely popular convention destination, and we have many large conventions scheduled for the summer months of 2008," Hardberger wrote. To accommodate either convention, he said, the city would have to find new quarters for nearly 24 conferences, many of them booked by longtime customers.

To land either party convention would pump millions of dollars of revenue into the city, spur needed infrastructure growth, and create an expanded tourism base for the future. The fact that we would have been one of 11 cities in consideration for the Democratic Convention and one of 31 for the Republican Convention can’t be overlooked either. So why not submit a bid? Do we need not need the national press or money?

With press like this, San Antonio would be able to get a national sports team. With Wolff’s recent boondogal with both the Florida Marlins and New Orleans Saints, maybe it is time for a new chief negotiator.

Wolff imposed a May 15th deadline on the Marlins which forced them into talks with Miami-Dade. These talks seem to going well since Wolff hasn’t heard a thing from them since establishing the timeline.

It is starting to seem like the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing. If this continues, San Antonio will move into more and more isolationist policies harming San Antonio and its residents.