The League of Women Voters, as liberal a group as you’ll find this side of MoveOn.org, loves taxes. The more the merrier. In fact, that’s the message they delivered in a letter to state legislators after Saturday’s “town hall” dog-and-pony shows in Las Vegas and Reno….
Members of the Nevada Legislature,
The energy level in the Grant Sawyer Building was electric today during the January 29, 2011 Town Hall Meeting. The stories are real and embrace the urgency to create a plan for Nevada. The Great Recession continues aggressively. We get it. All the political capital and optimism in the world can not avoid the reality that we can neither cut nor tax our way toward recovery. Citizens of Nevada are asking and wondering how Governor Sandovals agenda and leadership will help us ‘Cowboy Up’ and move us forward again. The idea that we can go ” Back to the Future’ to 2007 spending levels is simply not sound. For example, are utilities, gas, unemployment levels magically reverting to 2007 levels ? Should Public Employees be vilified for their service? Does industry and business benefit from a cripped service system?
The Governor promised Transparency and moving away from the Status Quo, however, the budget is neither transparent nor exiting the status quo. No one wants to pay taxes- the only good tax is one levied on someone else. Yet the reality is that taxes are the cost of services and doing business as a government. Shell games, kicking the can down the proverbial road are games which do not produce solutions expected from elected officials. A no new tax pledge is commendable but avoids the fact that the existing tax structure is fragile and will not sustain nor allow Nevada to be competitive in the 21st Century.We will remain forever looking back to better days if we do not build a platform to support a stronger economy and system of services and K-20 education systems which move us forward.
I am told that a corporate business tax is not Constructional, yet I wonder. I am told that reforming the tax structure takes time- more time than the 120 day session..We do not have the luxury of time or to wait to act. We are in the 21st Century moving toward green energy and hopeful of producing a green economy. This opens a door to tax industry which takes Nevada resources out of the ground and profits produced in Nevada and invests the bounty out of state. Taxing a profitable enterprise in not a negative to industry and business- it is a cost to doing business and a means to maintian a return investment to secure a profitable climate and quality of life in our community.
We need revenue and that would be taxes. Let’s build a fair, non-regressive tax that embraces shared sacrifice — not a tax on one industry or one that cripples small business. Maybe we should find a tax that works and call it the Nevada Recovery Tax for the Future or the Sustainable Operational Tax. Not a gaming, mining or income tax. We need a Nevada Tax that works.
Regards
Sam King, LWVNV
I wonder if “Sam” is “Samantha’s” nickname…of if this is some guy cruising for chicks?
Gov. Brian Sandoval’s budget proposal would cut $625 million from K-12 education. Once you get into the millions, that sounds like a lot of money to the Average Joe. But in context, not really. As Anjeanette Damon of the Las Vegas Sun reported on Sunday, the vast majority of that reduction can be absorbed without impacting classrooms simply by slightly reducing the salaries of school personnel by 5 percent.
For example, instead of Frank Mathews – a Regional Professional Development Program director (huh?) for the Clark County school district – making $115,311.78 like he did in 2009 (Hat tip: Transparent Nevada), Mr. Mathews would be paid $109,546.19 to do whatever it is he does that’s so crucial to excellence in public education in Clark County.
In other words, the public education system in Nevada, under the governor’s plan, could continue to provide pretty much all of the necessary (and still many unnecessary) programs and services, including classroom instruction, that are currently being provided at less cost.
But there’s a turd in the punchbowl: Unions. Continue reading »
Ruben Murillo, union agitator for the Clark County Teachers Association, is stirring up the swarm of “educators and our supporters” to show up at the 9:00 am “town hall” dog-and-pony show tomorrow (Saturday) being hosted by Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford in Las Vegas to whine about how Gov. Brian Sandoval’s minimal proposed budget cuts “would harm our students and make it more difficult for Nevada’s economy to turn around.”
Murillo is urging his Coalition of Kvetchers to show up wearing red “to support public education.”
With all those red shirts running around, wouldn’t it be funny if Assemblyman Ed Goedhart showed up with a truckload of bulls from his dairy and cut them loose? It’d be the Running of the Liberals! Now THAT would be a rally worth attending.
In any event, conservatives led by Adam Stryker and Americans for Prosperity are also planning a morning rally to show SUPPORT for Gov. Sandoval – the kind of support he’s NOT getting from many legislative Republicans in Carson City. “Liberal backed interest groups have already pledged to spend half a million dollars to combat the budget plan that Governor Sandoval has proposed,” notes Stryker, “and we need to show that conservatives stand by our Governor.”
The conservative rally is scheduled to start at 8:00 am in front of the Grant Sawyer Building in Las Vegas, located at 555 E. Washington Street. The official dog-and-pony show will begin inside at nine o’clock. Tea party-like signs are encouraged for the rally; however, they will not be allowed inside the building afterwards.
There will also be a concurrent dog-and-pony show in Reno, hosted by Democrat Assemblywoman Debbie Smith at 9:00 am. That spectacle will be held in the Washoe County Commission Chambers at 1001 E. Ninth Street. Conservatives up north are urged to attend this meeting, as well, and not let the D’s have a monopoly on the media attention.
Jon Ralston reports the Democrat Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford has a new “rapid response” communications shop set up for the 2011 legislative session which today blasted proposed budget cuts. But so do Republicans. Indeed, their crack rapid response team also sent a press release out this morning criticizing Democrat Assembly Speaker Joe Dini’s apparent support for Gov. Bob Miller’s Business Activities Tax (BAT).
Ain’t no moss growin’ under the GOP’s feet.
The “birthright citizenship” issue is heating up, with movement in both Congress and Arizona to address it this week. Channel 8 News caught up with Gringo Chuck last night for my wimpy “both sides” of the issue opinion. Catch it here
I will say this, though. The issue of birthright citizenship – whereas any baby born on U.S. soil is automatically considered a citizen even if both of the baby’s parents are not – is a significant problem, especially when you consider that more than one in four babies born in Nevada in 2008 were to non-citizen mothers.
And the prime purpose of the post-Civil War 14th amendment was to grant citizenship to American slaves brought to this country against their will, not to pregnant Canadians who scoot across the border, drop their baby on U.S. soil, and then use that baby’s citizenship status for the next 30 years to bring all of his or her “eh”-speaking relatives into the country legally where they’ll tip poorly in restaurants and try to turn hockey into our national sport.
How was that for gratuitous stereotyping?
A new poll by Strategic National of New Hampshire primary voters on the 2012 GOP presidential race show Gov. Mitt Romney with 33.5%, Gov. Mike Huckabee with 14% and Gov. Sarah Palin with 13%.
Romney was governor or a northeastern state, so his lead isn’t surprising. Still, once the campaign fully engages, expect Mitt to take serious, maybe lethal hits for being the Father of ObamaCare. Unless he completely repudiates his own creation, there’s a rocky road ahead.
And the odds of Huckabee and Palin even making it to the starting gate are pretty long – Huck for pardoning cop killers while he was governor and Palin because she’s making too darned much money now to waste time running for the White House. In other words: the race remains wide open.
Apparently anticipating Gov. Sandoval’s victory, combined with a GOP take-over of the House, Nevada’s taxable sales jumped 2.7 percent in November 2010 over the November 2009 figures. Which again brings to mind the reality that the clock is ticking and the window of opportunity to “broaden” the tax base by taxing some services in a revenue neutral fashion and still enjoy a significant revenue increase as the economy rebounds is beginning to close.
Will the Nevada Legislature act responsibly, quickly and aggressively to take advantage of this not-soon-to-be-seen-again opportunity? Or will they again stick their collective heads where they can see their own pancreas and insist on raising taxes which wouldn’t be necessary if they just looked beyond the next 3-4 months? My money’s on continued keister-gazing.
LVRJ reporter Ben Spillman reports that “Dan Klaich, chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education (NHSE), said a proposal by Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval to cut state funding for higher education by $162 million would set colleges and universities back for years” at a legislative subcommittee on the budget yesterday morning. It is not true, however, that he was wearing his Chicken Little costume.
“I don’t bawk-bawk care how you do the bawk-bawk math,” Klaich cackled, “these are staggering bawk-bawk numbers and they are bawk-bawk numbers that cannot bawk-bawk be filled by bawk-bawk tuition and fee increases, bawk-bawk-BAWK!”
I am so sick of government bureaucrats like Klaich telling us what they can’t do, predicting budgetary Armageddon every…single….time. We’ve been listening to this end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it song-and-dance since the fall of 2007 when Jim Rogers was the Bawk-Bawker-in-Chief at NSHE. And yet, I was on campus at UNLV just this Monday afternoon and, guess what? They were open for business. And, get this, there were actually students there! Taking courses. Go figure.
Are we paying Dan Klaich to whine….or is it time for him to stop the whimpering, put his beak to the grindstone, and do the best he can with what he’s got? Seriously…if Mr. Klaich spent half as much time and effort making the hard decisions necessary to live within the taxpayer-funded university system’s means as he does whining about mo’ money that we don’t have, there wouldn’t BE a budget problem.
Gov. Brian Sandoval delivered his common sense, philosophically conservative, State of the State address Monday night. And by Tuesday morning the Democrats, with no plan or vision of their own, came out swinging; ripping the governor and his fiscally responsible budget a new one in legislative committee hearings almost before the rooster crowed.
Welcome to the Big Leagues, Guv!
So while Democrat leaders were fighting and kvetching during press interviews and legislative proctologic exams of the governor’s budget, what were Republican legislative leaders doing? Continue reading »
A new poll by Strategic National of New Hampshire primary voters on the 2012 GOP presidential race show Gov. Mitt Romney with 33.5%, Gov. Mike Huckabee with 14% and Gov. Sarah Palin with 13%.
Romney was governor or a northeastern state, so his lead isn’t surprising. Still, once the campaign fully engages, expect Mitt to take serious, maybe lethal hits for being the Father of ObamaCare. Unless he completely repudiates his own creation, there’s a rocky road ahead.
And the odds of Huckabee and Palin even making it to the starting gate are pretty long – Huck for pardoning cop killers while he was governor and Palin because she’s making to darned much money now to waste time running for the White House. In other words: the race remains wide open.
