WEEKLY EDITORIAL RECAP

Thursday

'I want a check'

Jim Rogers wants your money -- and he wants lots of it.

On Monday, the multi-millionaire chancellor of Nevada's university system put on his beggar's cap and urged the state to tackle its budget woes by seeking a $3 billion bailout from Washington.

Hey, everybody else -- from various state governors to corporate chieftains -- has his hand out, why shouldn't Nevada get a share?

Not surprisingly, Mr. Rogers got a fuzzy reception from state Democrats ... .

Where all this federal bailout cash is supposed to come from -- apparently, Beltway gnomes can simply rev up the Treasury printing presses to make sure there are enough greenbacks to go around -- is anybody's guess. Perhaps Mr. Rogers can query the econ departments at UNR and UNLV for an answer.

But Mr. Rogers wants more than the just the paltry $3 billion -- which at one point earlier this decade would have exceeded the state's entire general fund. In order to "adequately" fund state operations, he favors a 25 percent tuition hike, higher taxes on the mining industry, liquidating the state's share of the tobacco settlement and imposing a business income tax, which would no doubt eventually morph into an individual income tax. ...

"I want a check," he said Monday. "Just send me a check."

Mr. Rogers ... owns a broadcast empire and has donated plenty of his own fortune to Western universities. So we suggest that Mr. Rogers bankroll a ballot initiative to repeal the state's constitutional ban on an income tax. He can call it the "Just Send Me A Check" initiative, subtitled -- with apologies to the local teacher union official who uttered the immortal words -- "Just Give Us The Money, We'll Take It From There."

Certainly, the voters wouldn't dare ignore Mr. Rogers' pleas.