Lessons from Base Closings

John Fund has a very interesting piece on the base closing commission. Here is part that I found particularly interesting:

James Courter, a former New Jersey congressman who chaired a 1993 base-closing commission, told me that he heard every dire prediction imaginable that communities that lost their bases would die. "In fact, those places that planned ahead, aggressively sought out alternatives and improved their economic incentives often came out ahead of where they were," he says.