By: Chuck Muth
Nevada News and Views

TODAY’S NN&V HEADLINES

  • Rally aims to stop Nevada mustang roundups (NN&V Staff) – Wild horse and burro advocates and In Defense of Animals (IDA) are organizing a Wednesday rally in San Francisco.
  • Harry Reid’s Armenian Nightmare (Danny Tarkanian) – My name is Danny Tarkanian and The American Spectator just called me “Harry Reid’s Armenian Nightmare.” I’m writing to ask for your immediate support.
  • ACORN’s Newest Senate Pal (Warner Todd Huston) – The Weekly Standard focused on ACORN’s latest knight in shining armor in the Senate. Though, instead of holding a sword or a lance, this Senator is holding a bucket of the taxpayer’s money to give to ACORN.
  • Left, Right Agree – Rahm’s Gotta Go (NN&V Staff) – The Right and the Left don’t often agree, so when they do, it’s often newsworthy.
  • Voting Records of 90 Blue Dog and Moderate House Democrats (NN&V Staff) – Americans for Limited Government today released the voting records of some 90 Blue Dog and what it dubbed “so-called moderate” House Democrats on what ALG President Bill Wilson called “some of the most controversial votes of 2009.”

Click here to read these stories at the Nevada News & Views site!

MUTHS TRUTHS

“Unless Nevadans wish to pay more and receive less, there’s not going to be enough money to go around next year,” writes Las Vegas Review-Journal publisher Sherm Frederick on Sunday. “What to do? Here’s a good prescription: Start with a no-nonsense evaluation of existing government services. Identify the services primary to the life and well-being of Nevadans.”

Talk about strange bedfellows. This is EXACTLY what Las Vegas Sun columnist Jon Ralston and I have been saying for, like, forever. I mean, if Jon Ralston, Sherm Frederick and Chuck Muth can all agree on a course of action, shouldn’t the Legislature, you know, take it?

“Then, gather up all of the nest-feathering, job-killing public employee benefits — wildly generous pensions, preposterous side agreements, guaranteed overtime, ward-healing graft and no-work work rules — and eliminate them,” Frederick continued, “resolving from that day forward to only pay a fair day’s government pay for a fair day’s government work. That, I promise you, will solve Nevada’s budget problems.”

OK, that second part is the proverbial devil in the proverbial details. I’m with Sherm on this one, but somehow I think we lost Jon. Still, that’s EXACTLY why the Nevada Legislature needs to HAVE this debate over exactly what constitutes an “essential” service and what doesn’t.

Until you reach that consensus, arguing how to pay for government in Nevada will continue to be an exercise in aggravating futility. We’ll never have enough money to pay for all the government the liberals want and we’ll never cut existing government to the levels conservatives want.

By agreeing to identify and limit government to its core, legitimate functions, the Left and the Right could come to a mutually dissatisfied compromise in the middle. If only our elected leaders would lead us there.

OTHER NEWS & VIEWS

“Speaking of GOP governors who are in deep trouble: Perhaps no statewide official in the country can boast a disapproval higher than Gov. Jim Gibbons’s (R) 82 percent in a June Mason-Dixon poll. The good thing for Republicans is that they probably won’t have him as their nominee next year.

“Former District Court Judge Brian Sandoval is earning rave reviews and polling big leads over Gibbons, and he looks to be on the fast track to facing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) son, Rory, in the general election. Rory Reid’s candidacy is also interesting, because his father will be waging a highly difficult and visible campaign right next to him. Whether the Reid name is an asset or a liability, it will be on the ballot twice.”

– The Hill’s “2010’s most compelling governors’ races,” 12/27/09

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

  • “State retail sales were slumping? Raise the sales tax! Layoffs everywhere? Raise the payroll tax, and punish companies for creating new positions! Taxpayers holding onto their cars longer because they can’t afford new ones? Raise the vehicle registration tax! Hotels can’t fill their rooms? Raise the room tax! Then watch as the new revenues come nowhere close to projections, setting the stage for new cutbacks — and new calls for higher taxes.” – Columnist Glenn Cook reminding everyone what the geniuses at the Nevada Legislature did in 2009
  • “The wisest thing to do would be to take advantage of the casinos, which operate like little cities, and let the casinos offer K-12 education for children of the employees, let them go to school where mama works. That is a major beefit. It means that your kids could go to school while you’re working.” – UNLV professor Dave Hickey
  • “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s home-state party in Nevada is as closely tied to the unions as Michigan used to be in the days of Walter Reuther, and Reid views the world from that perspective.” – Columnist David Broder warning that the Democrat’s left-leaning policies threaten electoral disaster (Hat tip to Political Diary)
  • “Blowing up an American airliner is an act of war, not a criminal act. Treating (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab) as a criminal, reading him his Miranda rights and allowing him to lawyer up means we may have just lost any actionable intelligence and military edge that troops in Afghanistan could have used to capture or kill his co-conspirators. He should be turned over to the military as an enemy combatant so that he can be interrogated.” – Republican CD-3 congressional candidate Rob Lauer

CALENDAR

January 8: First Friday Happy Hour Brewhaha (we know, a week late – need to let people recover from their New Year’s Eve parties!). Among the expected guests: U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Robin Titus. Visit www.FirstFridayNevada.com