Microfiche is a wonderful thing. Okay, I take that back. Microfiche is a total pain now that we have all gotten used to internet based archives.

Nevertheless, we have taken the time to go through some of the microfiched copies of issues of the Midland Reporter-Telegram around the time the Economic Development Sales Tax was passed on November 6, 2001......on it's third try I should mention...the voters obviously having gotten it wrong the first two times it was brought forth. Enlightened (and almost certainly outside-the-box) thinking finally won out and the voters decided the issue...(some say for all time)...with a vote in the affirmative. Midland would have its Economic Development Sales tax and thereby guarantee its future.

We found campaign ads, Letters to the Editor, a couple of "Speaking Out" columns, and some Editorial Opinions. Over the next few days (or until we run out) we will be posting some of the better ones.

The Economic Development Sales Tax has been with us for nearly a decade. In that time, the pseudo-governmental agency known as the Midland Development Corporation has pulled over $25 million out of the local economy. It has banked most of that both denying the taxpayers of Midland the use of their own money and also precluding the much vaunted "multiplication factor" used by the High Priests of the Church of ED when artificially inflating the impact of every dollar they re-direct from the free market.

Of the money that has been spent, no real success can be shown in regard to Midland's economic development nor its diversification. Companies are lining up to "renegotiate" the terms of their "forgivable loans" from the MDC. Indeed, the Mother of All Economic Development Success Stories, the original Cingular arrangement, has essentially collapsed as far as any promise to alter or diversify the local economy.

Now, almost ten years later, in light of all that we now know regarding the performance of our local economic development initiatives, have a look at these archived items and see how well the promises have matched up with the performance.

More tomorrow.

• Part I: If we don't pass this tax, then the Terrorists will have won!
• Part II: This economic development stuff is easy!
• Part III: We will use this money to diversify the economy. Except when we don't.
• Part IV: Government bailouts? No problem!
• Part V: Naysayers! They have no vision!"
• Part VI: That Free Market thing? That's like sooooo Reagan. We're smarter than that now.