As the August sun beats upon our brains like a hammer on an anvil, it seems to be rendering us soft in the noggin. Reader kerr_mudgeon has aggregated a few instances, the pages of the Los Angeles Times, which seems to cover Nevada better than do the hometown papers.
Get felt up at McCarran. Those friendly TSA screeners at McCarran International Airport will get to know you even better by dint of copping full-body feels. This is, if possible, even creepier than the X-ray scanner — also slated for Vegas deployment. Is there no humiliation to which Americans are unwilling to subject themselves in the name of “safety”? Our marketing motto should no longer be “What happens here …” but “Abandon all privacy ye who enter here.”
Dopehead? Perhaps rural Silver State Judge Dave Gamble has been toking on a little “loco weed” lately. He ordered a pot dealer to write a term paper supportive of his (Gamble’s) cranky anti-medical-marijuana agenda. Medicinal pot is legal in Nevada, a fact which clearly chaps Gamble’s ass something fierce. At least the three-month due date is more than we got in college.
Your tax dollars at work. Anyone who follows events out here through the national media is anywhere of the great confusion as to whether the “Battle-Born” state is pronounced Ne-VA-duh or Ne-VAAAH-da. People who use the latter tend to get ridiculed in these here parts. Lame-duck solon Harry Mortenson is preparing to ask the 2011 Legislature to sanction both pronunciations as acceptable. (Across the aisle, a colleague is suggesting Nevada’s tax structure be made more regressive than ever.) Just don’t let it get around that “Ne-VAH-duh” is a Spanish-influenced pronunciation, Harry. That’ll send the local jingoists pouring in the streets, howling for your blood.
Gomes in, Ribis out. There’s faint glimmer of hope for Resorts Atlantic City now that Dennis Gomes has emerged as the preferred bidder, edging out minority owner and current casino boss Nick Ribis. A former regulator, and Aztar Corp. and Cordish Gaming executive, Gomes is a slam-dunk for regulatory approval. With his extensive operational experience, he would appear to make Ribis redundant. Not to worry: Ribis continues to preside over Colony Capital‘s failing Atlantic City Hilton, meaning that his reign of error on the Boardwalk is far from over.
“(Across the aisle, a colleague is suggesting Nevada’s tax structure be made more regressive than ever.)”
David, what’s the correct URL? I couldn’t find it. Thanks.
Irony at it’s best in Nevada. Selling any pot to anyone in any parking lot is not medical marijuana. Yes, getting a “card” is quite easy in California, but this man utterly revoked his right to medical marijuana by attempting to profit from pot cultivation and to transact outside of the system. The judge might be interested in the mans essay, but us California patients who do adhere to our rules and regulations look at people like him as criminals who try to make bank on the backs of sick and injured people. I understand the medical marijuana movement is beginning to make hay in Nevada, so this judge is attempting to undermine any progress IMHO. Nevada should be front and center in this issue, assuming that the Libertarian slant the media claims exists in the State. Let people choose for themselves what they want to injest or medicate with!
Sorry, folks. The correct URL is: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/aug/23/nv-assembly-gop-leader-consider-tax-on-food/
As tax increases go, this would be especially heinous since everybody has to eat and thus would impose a particular burden on Nevada’s large underclass. Meanwhile, the lawmaker sayeth naught about raising income taxes on the many non-casino businesses that currently freeload off of gaming-revenue taxes.
“Goicoechea said his goal as minority leader is to narrow, if not strip, the Democrats of their super-majority status in the lower chamber and give the GOP caucus “enough clout” in budget negotiations to be relevant.”
– Yeah, right. The Repubs are “relevant” in the California legislature due to the requirement that any annual budget has to pass with a two-thirds vote.
Result? Yet again there’s no budget three months after the “deadline”, and no prospect of one. Repubs, the minority, refuse to agree to any increase in any fees or taxes to help close a $19 billion deficit; they want yet more cuts to education, libraries, local government, health care, etc. – and they say it’s “not necessary” for the state to pay back local governments the money that they have had stolen from counties’, cities’ and towns’ accounts. The State Controller is preparing to issue IOUs AGAIN to pay the state’s bills and workers’ wages.
The Repub candidate for governor is touting her economic renewal plan, one main component of which is an “immediate across-the-board tax cut”.
So good luck, Nevada – but if you give the Repubs a “relevant” number of legislators, you won’t get it.
Companies like Station Casinos and Boyd Gaming ought to be quick off the mark in opposing this, if only from self-interest. Not only would the tax hike fall disproportionately on people like their line employees, it would take discretionary dollars out of the locals-casino market that is ailing so badly right now.