Lessons From A Nevada Supermarket Parking Lot
By: Doug Busselman, Executive Vice President
The young family had just finished with their regular grocery shopping trip and were completing the process of putting their purchases into the family’s mini-van when they noticed young Stephen unwrapping a candy bar.
“Stephen, where did you get that candy bar?” his mother asked somewhat surprised.
“They had lots of them and I wanted candy,” the young boy responded, continuing to try to peel back the paper.
“You stole a candy bar…” the young woman shrieked. “We don’t take things that aren’t ours!”
“That makes you a thief,” his father followed-up in his take-charge voice.
Suddenly Stephen understood that his parents weren’t going to be going along with his having this candy bar and the pangs of newly discovered guilt were creeping into his consciousness.
His mother threw open the car door that opened to his back seat booster chair, grabbed the partially opened candy bar and started to unbuckle the boy’s seat belt harness…
“Young man, you are going to go back into that grocery store and tell the manager what you did.” His mother sternly commanded. “It’s wrong to steal. You are going to tell them what you did and say that you are sorry that you stole their candy bar.”
With each parent taking an arm and leading their now crying young son back into the grocery store, they walked past a card-table where a couple of advocates calling themselves “Nevadans for Fair Mining Taxes” were seated gathering signatures on petitions for an increase of taxes on Nevada’s mining companies.
On their initial way into the grocery store both Stephen’s Mom and Dad had signed the tax increase petition and Stephen remembered the discussion about how the Mining Companies ought to pay more for taxes… “they have lots of money and we want it!” Stephen remembered his Dad jokingly saying as he signed the petition.
The petition-taker gave young Stephen a wink as he passed by, back into the grocery store to find the store’s manager…
The Moral Of The Story:
When a young boy takes something that doesn’t belong to them, such as an inexpensive candy bar – it’s theft. When adults organize themselves to take millions which don’t belong to them – that’s social justice…
The young family had just finished with their regular grocery shopping trip and were completing the process of putting their purchases into the family’s mini-van when they noticed young Stephen unwrapping a candy bar.
“Stephen, where did you get that candy bar?” his mother asked somewhat surprised.
“They had lots of them and I wanted candy,” the young boy responded, continuing to try to peel back the paper.
“You stole a candy bar…” the young woman shrieked. “We don’t take things that aren’t ours!”
“That makes you a thief,” his father followed-up in his take-charge voice.
Suddenly Stephen understood that his parents weren’t going to be going along with his having this candy bar and the pangs of newly discovered guilt were creeping into his consciousness.
His mother threw open the car door that opened to his back seat booster chair, grabbed the partially opened candy bar and started to unbuckle the boy’s seat belt harness…
“Young man, you are going to go back into that grocery store and tell the manager what you did.” His mother sternly commanded. “It’s wrong to steal. You are going to tell them what you did and say that you are sorry that you stole their candy bar.”
With each parent taking an arm and leading their now crying young son back into the grocery store, they walked past a card-table where a couple of advocates calling themselves “Nevadans for Fair Mining Taxes” were seated gathering signatures on petitions for an increase of taxes on Nevada’s mining companies.
On their initial way into the grocery store both Stephen’s Mom and Dad had signed the tax increase petition and Stephen remembered the discussion about how the Mining Companies ought to pay more for taxes… “they have lots of money and we want it!” Stephen remembered his Dad jokingly saying as he signed the petition.
The petition-taker gave young Stephen a wink as he passed by, back into the grocery store to find the store’s manager…
The Moral Of The Story:
When a young boy takes something that doesn’t belong to them, such as an inexpensive candy bar – it’s theft. When adults organize themselves to take millions which don’t belong to them – that’s social justice…
Posted by Doug Busselman at 1/25/2010 9:10 AM 
Categories: 2010 Elections
Tags: Nevada Petition For Fair Mining Taxes Mining Tax Increases
Categories: 2010 Elections
Tags: Nevada Petition For Fair Mining Taxes Mining Tax Increases
This is SO true. Thank you for a very strong illustration of what is wrong in this country today!!!
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Doug, Taxes aren't thievery. Nevada has depended on room tax and a percentage of casino winnings to pay for much of the demands our rapid growth have dumped on our infrastructure. Gaming winnings are waning. Even though 30,000 people have left the states, we still have a majority of the people who moved here between 1995 and 2007. They made Nevada the fastest growing state for years running. They still need services and facilities. Now that gaming is fading, where will our governments get the money to maintain the facilities, and pay for the services? Reno has announced layoffs of vital police and fire personnel, and Sparks will soon follow. Why? During the boom time, the cities had the power and the opportunity to collect developer impact fees for YEARS. They didn't. Reno only voted to apply those fees LAST SUMMER, well after the housing boom collapsed. Doug, if your house catches fire, and the fire department takes a long time to respond, and it burns to the ground in the meantime, please thank your city council for failing to regulate and govern as it was charged to do.
Apparently you're ignorant of Nevada's history, too. When Nevada was founded, taxing the mines was prohibited by a constitutional amendment. Only recently was that amendment deleted and taxes allowed on mine proceeds. Throughout all the rest of our history we've watched the revenue from mining leave the state to make other states, and even countries, wealthy, while Nevada languished. San Francisco was not built with the short-lived revenues from the California gold rush. It was built with profits from the Comstock Lode. San Francisco has been an internationally renowned city for more than a century. Virginia City, from where the "California Bank Crowd" derived all the profits to build San Francisco, for decades has barely made enough to continue to exist from tourists who want to visit abandoned homes, mines, and graveyards.
You claim to be and advocate for farming, yet you're sticking your nose into something of which you're entirely ignorant: Nevada history, and mining. Did you know there are over 100,000 abandoned gold mines in Nevada? Do you know many of them leak toxic heavy metal salts decades after they were deserted, and have to be cleaned up?
Nevadans deserve to derive a benefit from mining activities in the state, especially when we inherit the responsibilities for the consequences, in perpetuity, after they stop.
Perhaps, if you don't understand this, you should return to Minnesota. By the way 3M is from Minnesota, right? Does the State of Minnesota tax mining? I would think they do.
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