It all feels so damned futile.
I swear, DB just about had me in tears with this one.
Desert Beacon: The Assembled Wisdom’s Annual Year End Posture Parade
. . . Nevada Republicans have mastered the art of the perpetual campaign. Governance requires some negotiation. Campaigning assumes posturing. Postures are important. Postures are evidently more important than funding the Desert Research Institute, more important than keeping our museums open for tourists, more important than funding K-12 education such that teachers and aides aren’t laid off. Postures allow the candidate to return to the hustings with prideful announcements like, “I voted against new taxes.”
No candidate is going to mount the dais and proclaim — “I helped gut the DRI budget for earthquake monitoring and research.” At least this doesn’t seem to be a particularly good opener for an address in Wells. No candidate is going to grab a microphone and say, “I voted for a budget which meant that about 1,800 employees of the Clark County School District were laid off.” No candidate in Washoe County would lead remarks with “I voted to make the University of Nevada a prime target for other universities and colleges around the country to pick off the best faculty members and researchers.”
Imagine a candidate proclaiming “I did my job in the state legislature, I made it more difficult for Nevadans in rural areas to find health care services, and I wanted to make it even more difficult for them to find mental health care.” Or, “You should return me to my desk in Carson City because I fought for a budget that made the lines longer at the DMV, and that required local governments to tighten their belts such that the people in County Clerk’s offices had to be furloughed periodically no matter how much work needed to be done for the District Court.”
[ . . . ]
It’s easy to chant “No New Taxes,” it’s harder to explain to parents why their first grader is in a classroom with 35 others. It’s easy to recite “No New Taxes,” but harder to explain why a person had to sit and wait for someone to be available to process a commercial driver’s license. It’s easy to intone “No New Taxes,” but rather more difficult to explain why the local library has cut back on its after school reading programs for children. How easy it is to chant “No New Taxes” but how difficult to provide a rationale for pot-holes, disintegrating pavement, and unplowed winter roads. Easy is saying “I voted against new taxes,” hard is saying “Sorry, but the state park near you is going to have to close down for a while…find something else to do with your family.”
And, it’s easy to piously proclaim one’s love and affection for “first responders,” those heroes in uniform who protect our lives and property — it’s harder to explain why those self-same individuals should give back wages and benefits when the “sacrifices” come at the expense of one side of the coin and the benefits accrue to the other. It’s the same old Something-For-Nothing sloganeering — the perpetual campaigners love those first responders, but not quite enough to require that those who depend upon their services provide an appropriate wage, decent health care, and reliable retirement benefits.
Perhaps next round someone will help the population translate the No New Taxes mantra. Yes, we can have no new taxes — but what that really means is No New Classrooms, No New Road Maintenance, No New Park Services, No New Museums, No New Research Facilities, No New Public Health Services, No New Monitoring of Out-patient Clinics, No New Police and Fire services, No New Rural Clinics, No New Forestry Camps, No New…Anything. And, there’s even a good chance that not only will nothing be New — we’ll have trouble even keeping what we already have.
Las Vegas Gleaner: Alrighty then, that went about as well as could be expected
There are more Democrats than Republicans in the Nevada Legislature. In America, that means Republicans win. So it’s semi-official: no new taxes.
The media still must spend a few weeks manufacturing the requisite sturm und drang over the final process by which Sandoval/teabagger supremacy will be confirmed. Will there be a special session? Or two? Perhaps someone somewhere cares.
But in the end, your Nevada Legislature will do nothing meaningful to help anyone escape crushing financial pressures or find a decent job. On the contrary, they’ll be throwing people out of work, thank you. There may be very little that Nevada’s governor and legislators can do to help the economy, but they can hurt it, by emulating Herbert Hoover at his worst, so they’ll do that.
On Sunday, Jon Ralston was still hopeful, but he used today’s column to address the special election for CD-2, so who knows if he still holds out that same hope.
I’m sure my “fire” will come back. But right now? Gah.
An alliance between the greedy and the supid.
A coalition of willing victims.