I am loathe to call for a government entity to “partner” with a developer. Using tax money and government borrowing power to support private interests is anathema to capitalism and to our Constitution.

Local governmental entities are, more and more, being used as tools of socialism, taking tax money and other public properties and giving them in whole or in part to private interests.

Maybe Bond, James Bond, meant a Plutocracy.

Kevin Phillips, Nixon’s chief political strategist for his ’68 campaign, asserts in his book “Wealth and Democracy” that America has become a Plutocracy in that there has been a fusion of money and government.

I don’t agree with him politically, but it makes for interesting reading. Here’s the transcript of a conversation he had with Bill Moyers;

http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_phillips.html

But, more accurately, Boise’s sale of the land consummates its role as a land speculator – just a really poor one, since you try to sell when the market is hot. If the city held onto the land for a public purpose (even it that meant that it would take on the role of landlord, as long as the rent went to fund public initiatives that would otherwise be funded through a general tax) then it could not be asserted that it was playing the market.

In my humble opinion, a public agency should never be buying land just to sell it – ever.

Here’s a good link to some sound descriptions of the various forms of governance – broken down into two camps: “Collectivisms”, like socialism & “Individualisms”, like capitalism.

http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/street/pl38/sect2.htm

The spellings are a little off, given that it’s from a British website, but it offers some fair evaluations.