Leverage For Tax Increases – Playing Every Angle
By: Doug Busselman, Executive Vice President
Bus loads of college kids making their way to the Nevada Legislature to tell the world that the state should not balance the budget on their backs. Legislative field days with “hearings” held at various college campus locations around the state to shine the focus on how it just isn’t possible to cut Nevada government’s spending…tax increases are the only solution.
Every day I get to drive by a flashing video billboard with a forlorn young girl, advocating that Nevada can’t expect to balance the state budget on the backs of little kids in K-12 education.
Now, as we read in this regularly scheduled (since the paper comes out everyday it’s “regular”) pro-tax alert, rural Nevada is also a reason for state government getting more from the taxpayers of Nevada.
Yep, Nevada Democrats believe in taxes and they aren’t shy (even though they’re waiting for the right time to launch their assault) about the need to dig deeper and deeper into taxpayer’s wallets. Government is the center of their universe and in order to hand out spending for all those “services required”…taxpayers need to ante up and provide for those with their hands out.
In the current book I am reading by Benjamin Wiker, he accounts writings going back to Aristotle who wrote… that a democratic revolution occurs “particularly on account of the wanton behavior of the popular leaders” who, on behalf of those who are labeled as poor/needy, harass “those owning property” and “egg on the multitude against them” and “slander the wealthy in order to be in a position to confiscate their goods.”
Although I doubt those manipulating Nevada’s political levers were considering Aristotle’s insights as they put together their game-plan for extracting higher taxes…it is worth noting that their methods aren’t entirely their own design.
The students, who they are using as pawns in their project, seem to consider themselves important as instruments in making a difference – that, as we’re seeing, is the necessity required to make the end-game of government’s ascension seem legitimate.
Bus loads of college kids making their way to the Nevada Legislature to tell the world that the state should not balance the budget on their backs. Legislative field days with “hearings” held at various college campus locations around the state to shine the focus on how it just isn’t possible to cut Nevada government’s spending…tax increases are the only solution.
Every day I get to drive by a flashing video billboard with a forlorn young girl, advocating that Nevada can’t expect to balance the state budget on the backs of little kids in K-12 education.
Now, as we read in this regularly scheduled (since the paper comes out everyday it’s “regular”) pro-tax alert, rural Nevada is also a reason for state government getting more from the taxpayers of Nevada.
Yep, Nevada Democrats believe in taxes and they aren’t shy (even though they’re waiting for the right time to launch their assault) about the need to dig deeper and deeper into taxpayer’s wallets. Government is the center of their universe and in order to hand out spending for all those “services required”…taxpayers need to ante up and provide for those with their hands out.
In the current book I am reading by Benjamin Wiker, he accounts writings going back to Aristotle who wrote… that a democratic revolution occurs “particularly on account of the wanton behavior of the popular leaders” who, on behalf of those who are labeled as poor/needy, harass “those owning property” and “egg on the multitude against them” and “slander the wealthy in order to be in a position to confiscate their goods.”
Although I doubt those manipulating Nevada’s political levers were considering Aristotle’s insights as they put together their game-plan for extracting higher taxes…it is worth noting that their methods aren’t entirely their own design.
The students, who they are using as pawns in their project, seem to consider themselves important as instruments in making a difference – that, as we’re seeing, is the necessity required to make the end-game of government’s ascension seem legitimate.
Posted by Doug Busselman at 3/27/2011 5:37 AM 
Categories: 2011 Nevada Legislature
Tags: Nevada Budget and Taxes Nevada Educational Spending
Categories: 2011 Nevada Legislature
Tags: Nevada Budget and Taxes Nevada Educational Spending
Doug,
Once again you're being melodramatic. You agreed with me recently that the budget cuts to education were shocking. Nevada's government can't balance its budget, and fund the widening state income gap by cuts alone. Nevada's cities, firmly in the grip of big businesses, did not restrict growth, plan growth, nor levy fees that paid for the wild growth that took place. The result of their dereliction of duty is the debt for infrastructure maintenance and improvement devolved on the state. Demanding that Nevada's medium and large businesses pay a modest income tax to plug the holes in the state budget is neither unreasonable nor punitive. Right now, these businesses pay NO income tax whatsoever.
Recently it was revealed that the state's tax commission was quite lax in making certain they collected taxes from mining that was owed. Most mining companies paid less than half of the 5% of the taxes they owed to Nevada, and some companies paid none at all. So, according to you, instead of collecting the taxes owed, and plugging the holes in the mining tax law, we should cut vital programs from the University of Nevada system at a time when Nevada needs well trained people to support and attract business?
I noticed that when conservatives talk about people being on welfare, they pompously announce, "There's no such thing as a free lunch." Yet, when they're asked to pay their fair share of taxes, after gorging themselves at the public trough, suddenly they're insisting they are being treated unfairly. You seem to be in this camp. Nevada can't continue to exist relying on a 19th Century tax model that didn't serve it well even in that century. So, instead of harping on the legislature being mean to all those poor millionaires, maybe you should be suggesting an equitable income tax structure for businesses in Nevada. I outlined my suggestions, and I don't think they were onerous. Your turn.
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Have you read, THE FATE OF THE GOOSE WHICH LAID GOLDEN EGGS ? First graders understand that opening up the bird did not result in more golden eggs, but in NEVER any more eggs. What did that man in charge do then? The story never tells. Any number of ways could be used to vent anger when ones short sighted foolishness does not result in the reward he demanded. "Slippery slope" of more harm to more living things often results. He/She may have rounded up the gosling hatch and marched them around the dismembered body of The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs.
Let's do it again, maybe THIS time it will work! And so the results of 'head banging' continue!
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