It’s the most wonderful time of the year; time to hand out some virtual hardware to the winners of the 4th annual Hammer Awards, Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry President and CEO Glenn Hamer’s look back at the wild and the wacky of the year in politics and anything else that’s on his mind.…
Glenn Hamer & Amanda Reeve Sitting around the fire and visiting with family and friends adds a little something special to Holiday festivities, and it is just about the only time that we in the Valley get to put our fireplaces and outdoor chimineas to use. However, as we learned today at the “Don’t Burn…
Glenn Hamer & Garrick Taylor President Obama this year has been making noise about wanting to hike the federal minimum wage to $9 per hour and then indexing the wage to inflation. That means the hourly wage would go up every time the cost of living goes up. The latest Gallup poll finds that over…
Glenn Hamer Various Arizona Chamber and business leaders have made numerous visits to Washington, D.C. over the years to push for reform of our nation’s badly broken immigration system. As a border state, we understand this issue well. For years, the business community in Arizona has been pressing Congress and the Administration for a secure…
Glenn Hamer A version of this column appeared earlier this week on Glenn Hamer’s blog, The Hamer Times. Here is my formula for ending the budget impasse: Republicans should relent on adding strings to the funding bill to keep open all of the federal government operations and should pass a “clean” continuing resolution (CR). For…
Glenn Hamer and Debbie Johnson Lost in the battle in Washington over whether and how to fund the Affordable Care Act and over whether and how to raise the debt ceiling, is the very real pain the government shutdown is inflicting on Arizona business. This pain is especially acute in Arizona’s tourism sector, where the…
Glenn Hamer Arizona has a rich golf history. We have hundreds of outstanding courses throughout the state, ranging from affordable municipal courses to Golf Digest five-star offerings. We’re host to top-flight tournaments like the Accenture Match Play Championship at Dove Mountain and the Waste Management Phoenix Open, the PGA tour’s best attended event. Our state universities’…
Steve Macias In the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, the author examines how a person’s drive, motivation, and success can be influenced by extraneous factors such as birth month. (For example, hockey players in Canada born in January have a head start developing their skills over kids born later in the year based on how…
Glenn Hamer I attended an immigration town hall in Mesa Tuesday with Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake hosted by The Arizona Republic and 12 News. Kudos to The Republic for hosting this educational event, which will air on Sunday after Meet the Press. Both senators thoughtfully made the case that immigration reform is a…
Glenn Hamer I’d imagine that the speechwriter preparing President Obama for his visit to Phoenix this week was hard pressed to come up with many highlights in the White House-Arizona relationship. We’ve had a rocky marriage over the past five years. From health care, to tax policy, to labor relations, the administration has made it…