Oklahoma City taxpayers raised their sales tax rate to build a new state-of-the-art arena and renovate their convention center (the Myriad — rechristened as the Cox Convention Center). The same tax built a new baseball park and a canal. A later incarnation of the same tax was used to revamp the barely-five-year-old arena to accommodate the whims of a small number of freakishly tall millionaires.

Surely all that public investment is sufficient to stimulate private investment. Surely free enterprise can handle things from here.

Not according to a consultant hired by the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce:

The Eagles show sold out within about an hour after tickets went on sale on the Internet. And the band was so impressed with the experience, members decided to return to Tulsa for a second soldout show during that tour in November instead of going to Oklahoma City, says Paige Laughlin, marketing manager.

"For the past 10 years, everyone in Tulsa has been traveling to Oklahoma City," Laughlin says.

Tulsa was leading Oklahoma City for a while in development, until the early 1980s when Oklahoma City developed its downtown area with a convention center, baseball park and the Bricktown entertainment district.

[bh: MAPS in the 1980s? Clearly they didn't get all their facts straight]