WEEKLY EDITORIAL RECAP

TUESDAY

No 'fair shake' for METRO?

When police appear before the Legislature in 2011, asking for the second half of their tax hike, more than six years will have passed since from the valley's vote on the issue. That's too long to consider it a mandate, given how much has changed since then. The County Commission should put a new advisory question on the 2010 ballot, asking voters to restate their position anew.

WEDNESDAY

The Rhyolite plan

"Nobody will be laid off because of the payroll tax," Assemblyman Richard Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, sneers.

"We are talking about a couple hundred (dollars) more for each employee a year. Any business that doesn't want to pay that, I don't want in the state."

Spoken like a true member of the coddled, hereditary government elite.

In a time when many a mini-mall in this town has at least one if not two business locations suddenly vacated, their empty black windows staring out like the glazed-over eyes of that dead horse in the desert, this one should surely go up on the wall, in third place under the response of the queen of France when told the people had no bread, and of first lady Hillary Clinton's exasperated reply when told many small businesses could not afford to provide the employee insurance coverage mandated under her doomed Hillarycare scheme, that being: "I can't go out and save every undercapitalized entrepreneur in America."

THURSDAY

PRESERVING THE PRESERVE

It's now revealed the new-built collection of interactive exhibits, "green" buildings and desert plantings has absorbed nearly $20 million in subsidies since the water district opened it on June 8, 2007, requiring almost $9.3 million in new operating subsidies from the water district over the past year alone. ...

Have we learned anything here? The next time someone proposes a few hundred million dollars in bond guarantees or direct tax subsidies to launch some kind of ... say ... "light rail mass transit" scheme in the valley, vowing "our ridership projections show the thing will pay for itself from fares alone starting in its second year," what are we going to say?