When it rains, it pours — and Nevada is all wet
To the editor:
A gun-toting, text-messaging cowboy governor who shoots from the hip while still married to an unhappy cowgirl. Maverick, term-limited legislators who worry more about their business than the public's. A real, live Western government that spends more time and money reacting to problems than providing foresight and oversight.
Is this a clever story line for an upcoming TV soap opera? Not really, but it is a scary plot line repeat of the well known-movie, "A Perfect Storm."
Now that the easy money spigot has been shut off, Nevada government and Clark County seem to be careening out of control. What's left is the unattractive, naked truth that many of our politicians and government administrators have, for at least a decade, been unwilling to face: They are totally unprepared or unwilling to operate our state and local government in sound fiscal manner. Everywhere taxpayers look, fiscally and ethically irresponsible gremlins lurk, seeking to savage their already stressed pocketbooks.
UMC, the county hospital of last resort for the poor and uninsured, has been sacked, pillaged and plundered, allegedly by outsiders hired away from that bastion of political virtue, Cook County, Ill. UMC has been financially underwater for so long it should have been declared brain dead years ago.
Our private health care clinics now have their own cross to bear; apparently profits were more of a concern than the welfare of 50,000 citizens.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, still woefully understaffed, is now funding its much-needed expansion using unreliable sales tax revenues. It is doubtful that this can ever placate the real demand for police services. As a result, citizens bear a greater social and economic burden than elsewhere. Citizens here pay double and triple the auto and home insurance rates available elsewhere when they could have spent that excess for far more protection, thereby dramatically lowering their insurance rates while improving their personal safety.
Not to be outdone, the lack of judicious oversight by residential building and safety inspectors here in Clark County was indeed contagious. Like a plague, it spread to the county's commercial building inspectors, who were just about as observant as were our hotel operators when performing routine maintenance and renovations.
And how about education? Is there any good going on here? Everyone who reads is aware of how poorly our students are doing in math and probably elsewhere. Not to worry, soon the teachers union will be able to get a major tax increase for education. I'm certain that by significantly increasing the salaries and benefits of our current teachers this will provide the big boost in student achievement we're all hoping for. Perhaps the money is needed, but unless you're an aspiring politician looking for votes or a labor organizer, this isn't the way to do it.
In the midst of all this, we are saddled with a Legislature that meets for four months every two years and will always be relatively ineffective for as long as its members work part time. What do taxpayers think our elected officials will be doing when they next reconvene in 2009? Will they be introducing new and innovative laws that better protect citizens and lower costs?
No. I suspect that instead they will spend the majority of their time trying to cover up those now naked chasms of oversight opened up during the prior 20 months they were AWOL. If they achieve any of this, they most likely will move on, trying to circumvent the No Legislator Left Behind Act that caps their tenure.
No concerned Nevada citizen should ever give a free pass to our latest version of governor moonbeam, Gov. Grim, oops, Jim Gibbons. Fresh from 10 years as a nondescript congressman and riding the heels of a no-new-taxes pledge with certification to carry nine concealed weapons and a text messaging device, he may well be poised to again shoot holes in the next state budget.
Gov. Gibbons, why wait until the next legislative session for your shootout at the OK Corral? Time is of the essence. You can call now for a special session to confront our duly elected part-timers about our state's dire fiscal and legislative oversight problems.
Yee haw, git along little doggies!
Richard Rychtarik
LAS VEGAS
Beltway idiocy
To the editor:
I was recently in Washington, D.C., and I had a chance to meet with our members of Congress. I asked Rep. Shelley Berkley why we weren't drilling for and using our own oil reserves, which happen to be very substantial. The answer that I got just left me standing there, wondering if I still live in the United States of America.
Rep. Berkley told me that if we used our own oil reserves, the price of gasoline would drop dramatically and then the people would not want to use or develop "flex" fuels and other environmentally safe fuels. The economic distress that high gasoline prices cause must be dealt with by the people.
I guess that the high cost of food due to the development of ethanol doesn't factor into this equation. The fact that we currently do not yet have any fuel that can totally replace oil doesn't seem to mean anything to Congress. So let's just berate the oil companies, claim that they are the bad guys, go on paying extremely high prices at the gas pump and watch our economy take a further nose dive.
By the way, another congressman had a very succinct answer to my question. He said, "Sierra Club" -- the same Sierra Club that held up construction on U.S. Highway 95 here in Las Vegas until it could get a $50,000-a-year useless job for one of its people overseeing the reconstruction of a high school, paid for by the taxpayers.
Anyone who wants lower gasoline prices should call their representatives and their senators and let them know that we want lower prices now, not a depression caused by their dreams of more environmentally safe fuels.
Bob Dubin
LAS VEGAS
