Clark County school board decides to build

The Clark County school board got something right last Thursday — it voted to relocate and build Triggs Elementary for the 2009-10 school year. That will certainly come as a relief to the 500 or so students sitting in 50 portables at Ward and Goynes elementary schools.

However, along with the much-needed Triggs and Wallin elementary schools, the school board also voted to move forward with plans to open Duncan and Stuckey Elementary — two schools whose necessity has been questioned. CCSD plans call for Duncan to be built in an area where every surrounding school currently has a 7 percent vacancy rate at least. Some of those schools are even slated to go to nine-month schedules next year without Duncan. Stuckey also would be built in proximity to almost 575 brand-new vacant seats.

However, despite the vote to “move forward,” neither Duncan nor Stuckey is set in stone yet. In a move quite out of character and a departure from its normal behavior, the school board has decided to wait until the July 1, 9 a.m. work session to finalize the actual decision on the $120 million plan.

Why the board chose to finalize this particular business item in a work session was not explained. Hopefully, the board weighed the possible disenfranchisements to parents and the public here before moving this decision from an evening meeting to a morning work-day session.

Note: In a memo to board members, Paul Gerner, the associate superintendent for district facilities, placed the district’s student overage at 800. However, CCSD official enrollment data — augmented to personal phone calls to every school in the area — say that the real number is closer to 500.

Cap and trade videos: funny and scary

Let's start with the amusing.



And the second video is Obama's Energy Czar admitting she hasn't read the cap and trade bill, although she's all over TV promoting it. How did not reading the stimulus bill work out for us? Video after the jump.



But hey, she's in good company. Henry Waxman, the author of the bill, doesn't know what's in the bill, either.

And if you want to find out what you're going to pay for this job-killing bill, check out this calculator from the Tax Foundation.

(h/t Net Right Nation)

Cap-and-tax calculator

The Tax Foundation has developed this nifty tool that allows you calculate the amount of extra taxes your specific household will have to pay every year due to a cap-and-tax bill. Note: the assumptions made by this tool reflect a much smaller reduction in emissions than the current Waxman-Markey bill.

Empowerment Schools - a simple solution

School districts in Clark and Douglas counties are experimenting with a new type of public school called “empowerment schools.” The concept is so simple you’ll wonder why public education hasn’t been run this way all along.

Instead of all-knowing bureaucrats in the central office deciding where resources are needed at individual schools and then assigning teachers, text books and supplies, empowerment schools receive money for each enrolling child. Then the schools decide for themselves how best to spend that money to educate their students.

Basically, think of empowerment schools as small entrepreneurial businesses focused on finding the best way to educate the kids in front of them — and traditional public schools as order-following outposts of a centrally directed command economy, as in the former USSR.

It will be a few years before we get some accurate and meaningful data on how well empowerment schools perform but initial results are promising. A Clark County School District survey in 2007 revealed that parents, teachers and students at the four original empowerment schools were all far more likely to feel positive about the school and its learning environment.

Check out NPRI’s full article on empowerment school results. Or turn to this article, which provides a bit more detail about how empowerment schools operate.

Public Deception - Taking over private healthcare

Obama's healthcare plan is simply to put private insurance out of business leaving government as the sole provider for your health insurance needs. If you don't take our word for it, how about some Democrats in congress or a Yale professor who came up with Obama's "public option" plan? Simply put, this is about making private health care too expensive, forcing people to drop their coverage so private coverage goes out of business. Sounds like a cruel and sinister plan to me.

Cato Institute busts Obama's healthcare plan

The Cato Institute deflates Obama's healthcare plan and puts it into perspective.

Further proof that the market will solve problems

Luxury yachts offer pirate hunting cruises. Seriously.

Wealthy punters pay £3,500 per day to patrol the most dangerous waters in the world hoping to be attacked by raiders.

When attacked, they retaliate with grenade launchers, machine guns and rocket launchers, reports Austrian business paper Wirtschaftsblatt.

Passengers, who can pay an extra £5 a day for an AK-47 machine gun and £7 for 100 rounds of ammo, are also protected by a squad of ex special forces troops.

This is another example of why I believe the free market, not the government, is the best way to provide products to consumers. Someone saw an opportunity to make a profit and they started a business. Now individuals have a choice to purchase it or not.

If government provides things like health care, individuals have no financial reason to innovate and innovation provides benefits to everyone. With government care, individuals and companies are rewarded based on their political clout, not for meeting consumer demand.

And as President Obama said last week, I want the best care for my family too.

Nevada gets F in transparency

Nevada received an F in the Center for Public Integrity's latest legislative financial disclosure rankings. The Center for Public Integrity is a Washington DC-based organization for investigative journalism that emphasizes government transparency. According to this latest ranking, Nevada ranks 42nd. You can see the state's report card on legislative financial disclosure here.

Talk on Nevada: The right medicine for health care reform

Talk on Nevada interviews NPRI Fiscal Analyst Geoffrey Lawrence on President Obama's health care reforms and the better alternatives available in a free market system.

For more information, check out the Heritage Foundation's health care rapid response page.

Uh-oh: Obama says he feels Las Vegas' housing pain

It's nice to know he cares about us. The problem is he wants to use taxpayer money to subsidize people who are having problems with their mortgages.

The White House refinancing plan was an improvement in that previously loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac needed to have 20 percent equity to qualify for refinancing.

Still, Titus, and more recently Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, have urged the Obama administration to loosen the equity requirement, arguing that with unemployment now at 11.6 percent, refinancing could help avoid foreclosures.

Opponents, however, have warned that taxpayers will hold the bag if homeowners default on the refinanced loans. Fannie and Freddie are essentially backed by the government.

Plus, politicians risk populist unrest over bailout fatigue.

Obama was well aware of the problem facing Nevada’s underwater homeowners, but not ready to commit to its solution.

“I know one suggestion that has been made is to further drop the equity requirements,” Obama said Wednesday. “I don’t want to weigh in yet because I haven’t seen the conclusions from Treasury about how that would impact the program, if it would cost additional money to taxpayers in order for us to get the banks to play along with it ... I just want to see what works within the constraints of the resources that we have.”

Obama did indicate, however, that bank bailout money is being eyed for housing — a move supported by Titus, Reid and Rep. Shelley Berkley.

“If those resources are now available and can be recycled in even more help for homeowners, that’s something that is worth considering,” Obama said.

Last week Titus, Berkley and other House lawmakers sent a letter to Geithner saying the additional funding could “help more principal homeowners in severely affected areas to stay in their homes.”

Life would be so much simpler (and better) if politicians wouldn't pick the winners and losers in an economy.

The actions of Titus, Berkley, Reid and Obama are especially regretable, because the housing market is finally starting to bottom out after the housing bubble burst.

Sales of existing homes increased for the fourth straight month in May and signs of a price bottom are starting to appear, Las Vegas housing analyst Dennis Smith said Wednesday.

"It could be. Let's get through the summer before we say anything," the president of Home Builders Research said. "It's hard to predict or analyze how to get through the new inventory you hear about of 20,000 foreclosures that haven't hit the market yet."

Home Builders Research reported 3,714 resales in May, a 42.5 percent increase from the same month a year ago and up from 3,652 in April.

For the first time in more than a year, the median price was unchanged from the previous month at $130,000. It's still down 43.5 percent, or about $100,000, from a year ago.

Total resales for the year are up 61 percent to 15,728, an amazing statistic considering all the negative reports bombarding the public almost daily, Smith said.

Just another simple case of supply and demand.

Australia on the verge of rejecting cap and trade

For two reasons — cost and Autralia's politicians are realizing that global warming hysteria is baloney.

There is rising recognition that introduction of a carbon tax under the guise of "cap and trade" will be personally costly, economically disruptive to society and tend to shift classes of jobs offshore. Moreover, despite rising carbon dioxide concentrations, global warming seems to have taken a holiday….

With public perceptions changing so dramatically and quickly it is little wonder Ian Plimer's latest book, Heaven and Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science, has been received with such enthusiasm and is into its third print run in as many weeks. [It's now up to the fifth printing.]

The public is receptive to an exposé of the many mythologies and false claims associated with anthropogenic global warming and are welcoming an authoritative description of planet Earth and its ever-changing climate in readable language.

One Australian Senator has a particularly interesting story.

On June 4, this delayed emission trading scheme passed the House of Representatives despite a vote against it by the opposition. But it now faces almost certain defeat in the Australian Senate. Whereas the Labor government controls 32 votes in the Senate, the opposition Liberal-National coalition controls 37 and is committed to vote against it if the Rudd government will not grant more time to consider the outcome of the Copenhagen climate conference in December and US Senate deliberations. This itself is a compromise position, because many of the coalition parliamentarians now want to vote unconditionally against an ETS in any form.

There are 7 other votes in the Senate: five Greens who say the scheme doesn't go far enough but who could be induced to go along; one independent, Nick Xenophon, who has pledged to vote against the bill unless the government waits till after Copenhagen; and one other, Senator Steve Fielding of the Family First Party, who has decided to investigate the whole thing first hand. Fielding could turn out to be the single deciding vote.

His story is particularly interesting. Andrew Bolt, who has been leading the charge against the global warming hysteria for years, notes that Fielding's investigation "could blow apart the great global warming scare."

Fielding went to the US to assess the American evidence for global warming at close quarters. As Melbourne's Age reported on June 4:

Senator Fielding said he was impressed by some of the data presented at the [US Heartland Institute's] climate change skeptics' conference: namely that, although carbon emissions had increased in the last 10 years, global temperature had not.

He said scientists at the conference had advanced other explanations, such as the relationship between solar activity and solar energy hitting the Earth to explain climate change.

Fielding has issued a challenge to the Obama White House to rebut the data. It will be a novel experience for them, as Fielding is an engineer and has an Australian's disregard for self-important government officials. Here is how The Age described his challenge:

Senator Fielding emailed graphs that claim the globe had not warmed for a decade to Joseph Aldy, US President Barack Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, after a meeting on Thursday…. Senator Fielding said he found that Dr. Aldy and other Obama administration officials were not interested in discussing the legitimacy of climate science.

Telling an Australian you're not interested in the legitimacy of your position is a red rag to a bull. So here is what Fielding concluded:

Until recently I, like most Australians, simply accepted without question the notion that global warming was a result of increased carbon emissions. However, after speaking to a cross-section of noted scientists, including Ian Plimer, a professor at the University of Adelaide and author of Heaven and Earth, I quickly began to understand that the science on this issue was by no means conclusive….

As a federal senator, I would be derelict in my duty to the Australian people if I did not even consider whether or not the scientific assumptions underpinning this debate were in fact correct.

As the US House is poised to vote on cap and trade this Friday, the public and our representatives need to remember that the case for cap and trade is political, not scientific.

(h/t Jay P. Greene)

Video: Cap and trade won't save the earth

Why? Mostly because the earth doesn't need saving from something every person emits when they breathe.



This week the House is likely going to vote on the Cap and Trade bill referred to by the video. Hold on to your wallets.

Even as Democrats have promised that this cap-and-trade legislation won't pinch wallets, behind the scenes they've acknowledged the energy price tsunami that is coming. During the brief few days in which the bill was debated in the House Energy Committee, Republicans offered three amendments: one to suspend the program if gas hit $5 a gallon; one to suspend the program if electricity prices rose 10% over 2009; and one to suspend the program if unemployment rates hit 15%. Democrats defeated all of them.

The reality is that cost estimates for climate legislation are as unreliable as the models predicting climate change. What comes out of the computer is a function of what politicians type in. A better indicator might be what other countries are already experiencing. Britain's Taxpayer Alliance estimates the average family there is paying nearly $1,300 a year in green taxes for carbon-cutting programs in effect only a few years.

Americans should know that those Members who vote for this climate bill are voting for what is likely to be the biggest tax in American history. Even Democrats can't repeal that reality.

And to make you feel even better, check out this video of Rep. Henry Waxman who admits he doesn't know the details of his own cap and trade bill.



(h/t The Foundry)

Secret core group meetings even kept some lawmakers in the dark about Nevada's budget

Isn't this just your favorite part of democracy? Our elected masters generously took four months this year to go to Carson City and decide how they were going to spend our money. Because they didn't want us lesser beings (citizens) to have to worry about what they were doing, legislative leaders held their meetings on the most important issues of the session — the budget and tax increases — in private. Turns out, our legislative leaders were so secretive, they also kept some of their lesser colleagues in the dark.

Both Senators [Amodei and McGinness] said one of their problems was that so many of the decisions were made behind closed doors by the so-called “core group.” They made clear that they weren't much better informed than the general public.

“That's a phenomenally curious way to conduct a legislative session,” said Amodei. “Were you being kept advised of what was going on in core? Until you got within 48 hours of going to the floor and voting, pretty much no.”

McGinness said they were generally told what was decided: “Then, at the end, it was go on the floor and vote.”

Both said leadership assumed the role of meeting and deciding what to do, then delivering their caucus' support rather than including them in the decision-making process.

And yes, it's all legal, because the Legislature has specifically exempted itself from Nevada's Open Meeting Law. If you want to find out more about where your legislator stands on transparency, see if he or she has signed the Nevada Freedom of Information Coalition's transparency pledge.

I'll leave you with this funny, but sadly realistic, dialogue between government bureaucrats on transparency.

Back in the 1980s this notion [transparency in government] was the subject of an episode (“Open Government”) of the British television sitcom Yes Minister. The following exchange among three bureaucrats illustrates just how difficult this whole business can be.

A: “What’s wrong with open government? I mean, shouldn’t the public know more about what’s going on?”

B: (with a look of disgust): “Are you serious?”

A: “Well, ah, yes, sir. I mean, it is the minister’s policy after all.”

B: “But it’s a contradiction in terms. You can be open, or you can have government.”

A: “But, but, surely the citizens of a democracy have a right to know.”

C: “No. They have a right to be ignorant. Knowledge only means complicity and guilt. Ignorance has a certain (pause) dignity. You don’t just give people what they want if it’s not good for them! Do you give brandy to an alcoholic?”

B: “If people don’t know what you’re doing, then they don’t know what you’re doing wrong.”

A: “I’m sorry, but I am the PM’s private secretary and if that’s what he wants, then . . .”
C: “You’ll definitely not be serving your minister by helping him make a fool of himself. Look at the ministers we’ve had. Every one of them would have been a laughingstock in three months had it not been for the most rigid and impenetrable secrecy about what they were doing!”

Are you a liberty "nerd"?

Welcome to the club. The Campaign for Liberty has a pretty hilarious list of liberty "nerd" eccentricities.

Here are some of my favorites. How many describe you?

...You have to cancel a date because you forgot to write your blog about why capitalism defeats socialism.
...Your classmates ask you questions about economics and civics because your political science professor can't answer them.
...The length of a liberty nerds conversation is in direct proportion to the odds of it ending at Mises vs. Friedman.
...You know the names of your U.S. and state representatives and senators who represent you in each district.
...Your idea of a fun Friday night is passing out liberty fliers, bumper stickers and copies of the Constitution at a socialists convention in your city.
...When you're at work and a customer mentions bailouts, war or anything else in the news and every employee there looks at you, expecting a comment.
...Your kindergartener gets in trouble at school for calling Hillary Clinton a socialist.
...You've used the term "Austrian Economics" multiple times today.

CCSD website infected?

Getting information from the heavily trafficked Clark County School District just became more dangerous.

Major web browsers today — Internet Explorer and Firefox, for example — were detecting malicious software on ccsd.net, the school district’s official website.

Contacted by NPRI, a CCSD public relations spokeswoman said that the district’s information technology staff had identified and removed the malicious software. However, subsequent visits from Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers still produced the same warnings.

According to the Google bad-website advisory service, www.ccsd.net is listed as “suspicious,” and visitors are warned that “this web site may harm your computer.”

According to Google’s automated monitoring service, “Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 6 time(s) over the past 90 days,” and of the 151 pages on the site tested over that period, “55 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent.”

The advisory service said its last visit to the site was Sunday, June 21, 2009, and that “suspicious content” was found then.

The district website gets heavy traffic. According to the site analytics software operated by Compete.com, ccsd.net gets about 150,000 unique visitors a month. That would translate into potentially tens of thousands of visitors to the district website having faced possible risk of harmful attacks to their computers and personal privacy.

According to Google, “[M]alicious software is often installed without your knowledge or permission when you visit these sites, and can include programs that delete data on your computer, steal personal information such as passwords and credit card numbers, or alter your search results.”

Websites can be programmed by malware creators to attack computers, spy, install bad software and steal information. All this can be done without the owner’s knowledge. Such websites often will also infect other computers with bad software.

Make sure to have your computer anti-virus and security software up to date when you are surfing the web. To learn more about bad and malicious software being downloaded to your computer without your permission, visit http://www.stopbadware.org/.

As of 10:38 a.m. today, the StopBadWare partnership was reporting that “Google has rescanned this site and continues to report badware behavior on this site.”

Let the market work: Las Vegas monorail edition

And the market working doesn't involve businesses seeking government bailouts.

Despite the promises of nine years ago, monorail officials now acknowledge they have quietly begun seeking public dollars in a bid to keep the financially troubled train running.

“We’re looking at all potential funding sources,” said Ingrid Reisman, a vice president of the Las Vegas Monorail. “We wouldn’t be doing our due diligence if we weren’t.

“Is there any determination what those solutions could be? No.”

Reisman said the monorail is looking at federal loans through the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act. Other sources with knowledge of the discussions said monorail officials are also looking at room tax money to help repay debt.

Let's review how the market is supposed to work. Businesses and individuals make investments. If a business succeeds, it makes money. If a business fails, it loses money. If it loses enough money, the business goes away. Or in the case of the monorail, it gets sold off to the highest bidder, who would be able to run it as he pleased.

And, all things considered, that's a good thing, because failing businesses are using limited resources (people and materials) inefficiently. The profits or losses of a business send a signal to other businesses and individuals. Profits tell other businesses to produce more of a certain product. Losses tell other businesses to stay away for losing products.

But if the government steps in and saves failing businesses, the signals change. Suddenly, more businesses are looking to produce a product that shouldn't be produced, because the government will reward them for it. (See also stimulus and bubble, housing)

And in the case of the Las Vegas Monorail, the reward for failure could be staggeringly large.

Fitch Ratings on Monday downgraded $450 million in bonds for the Las Vegas Monorail project to “C” from “CC,” which means the credit rating agency believes a default “appears imminent or inevitable.”

The project has $200 million in other debt, which can be repaid only after the $450 million “first tier” is repaid.

That's a lot of money for 3.9 miles of track. Makes me shudder to think about how much taxpayers will be on the hook for if the Harry Reid-backed, Sig Rogich-sponsored train to Victorville gets approval.

Artificial stripper bubble pops

In his recent article “Sorry, We’re Clothed,” Mises Institute President Doug French makes the case that the Las Vegas strip club market was artificially enhanced during the recent boom period through Fed injections of artificial money. Due to aggressive monetary expansion over the past 15 years, an excess amount of capital flowed into many industries and led to the creation of so-called “bubble” markets.

French lays the truth bare as he makes the case that the Las Vegas strip club market was one of the industries that enjoyed this type of unsustainable growth as inordinate amounts of capital fell onto the laps of strip club owners. As French shows, the necessary market correction that is the inevitable result of such unsustainable growth has led to a recent downturn in the strip club industry.

Talk on Nevada: What caused the recession?

Talk on Nevada interviews NPRI Fiscal Analyst Geoffrey Lawrence on what caused the recession.

For more information, check out the commentary Geoff wrote on this subject, Support for tax hikes relies on economic fallacies.

Explaining how a tax increase (no matter how small) destroys jobs

Now that the 2009 Legislative Session is over and Nevada lawmakers have passed a record-setting, job-killing, billion dollar, secret tax increase, the debate has shifted to what the effect of the tax increase will be.

Regardless, the payroll tax hikes will slow business growth, said Assemblyman Ty Cobb, R-Reno. He was one a handful of Republicans who backed Gibbons in his stance against any new taxes that weren't already approved by voters.

"I think we in the Assembly Republican Caucus estimated how much more it (tax increases) would cost businesses, and we thought it would cost 10,000 jobs (lost or not created)," he said.

Cobb said he actually heard of one Southern Nevada business laying off workers in anticipation of the payroll tax increase.

Assemblyman Richard "Tick" Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, disputed those jobs loss estimates, but didn't argue that a very small number of firms may choose not to move to the state as a result of the increased payroll tax, which is estimated by the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce to cost about $216 extra a year for each employee making an average salary of $40,000 at a company with a total payroll of more than $250,000.

Nevada doesn't need those type of firms anyway, Segerblom said.

"Nobody will be laid off because of the payroll tax," he said. "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." (Emphasis added)

Assemblyman Segerblom's line of argumentation — that such a "small" tax increase won't kill jobs — is being echoed by other advocates of increased taxes.

The evidence, though, shows that any tax increase Nevada passes this year — no matter how small — will cause jobs to be lost.

There's the economic law of supply and demand, Speaker Buckley's own words, a great explanation of why taxes discourage new innovations, a rap video, study after study after study, empirical evidence, and an example of how lowering taxes creates jobs.

Along with that info, consider the following analogy as well.

I'm in the Army National Guard and at least once a year, we take a Physical Training (PT) test. One part of the PT test is a two-mile run. To pass, you have to complete the run in a certain amount of time based on your age and gender. My minimum is 16 minutes and 36 seconds, so let's use that time for this analogy.

In a Company or Platoon, there will be dozens of individuals taking the test, just like there many, many businesses in Nevada. Some soldiers will run the two miles in less than 13 minutes and get a perfect score, some soldiers are (sadly) out of shape and can't come close to making it in the allotted time, and many soldiers are in the middle and have to push themselves very hard to make a passing time. This is similar to how some businesses are very profitable, some are obviously failing, and some are struggling but are barely meeting the standard of profitability through their hard work.

What would happen if the Company Commander told the soldiers they would have to run the two miles with a one-pound weight in their pocket? Everything else being equal, more people would fail.

Why? Adding one pound doesn't seem like a big deal. For someone who weighs 200 pounds, that is only adding half of a percent to his or her body weight. For soldiers at either the high or low end of the spectrum, it wouldn't change their results much. If you ran two miles in 13 minutes, you'd still pass, although with a slightly lower time. If you couldn't make it before, you wouldn't make it carrying an additional pound. The change in outcomes would occur among the individuals who were struggling to make it before. A soldier might have been able to run the distance in 16 minutes and 30 seconds, but with the additional handicap, he now comes in at 16 minutes and 45 seconds — a failing time.

This is the same way it is for businesses in Nevada that are now burdened with a half percent increase in the Modified Business Tax. This tax will greatly hinder businesses who are just barely profitable. If businesses aren't profitable, they go out of business. And when businesses go out of business, people lose their jobs.

A half of a percent doesn't sound like a lot, but to those soldiers or businesses that are working hard to meet the time or profitable standard, it can be the difference between passing and failure. Unfortunately, Nevada has chosen to increase the failure rate for its businesses and their employees.

Paul Krugman wanted a housing bubble in 2002

And, as Nevadans know, we got it.

The basic point is that the recession of 2001 wasn't a typical postwar slump, brought on when an inflation-fighting Fed raises interest rates and easily ended by a snapback in housing and consumer spending when the Fed brings rates back down again. This was a prewar-style recession, a morning after brought on by irrational exuberance. To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.

So let's review. In 2000/2001, the tech bubble burst and 9/11 happened. Both had negative impacts on the economy.

In a free-market system, recession (or at least a slowing of the rate of economic growth) would have occurred. Now, no one likes recessions. They cause individuals and families stress, anxiety and worry. But recessions are also necessary to avoid the kinds of deep economy problems we are having now.

During recessions, in a free-market system, the economy moves money and jobs from low-performing areas to higher-performing ones. And when I say "the economy," I mean millions of individuals acting in their own self-interest. The economy isn't a giant organism that has a mind of its own.

This reset is necessary and healthy, because resources (natural resources, products and people) are scarce. Keeping limited resources in low-value sectors of the economy and not allowing them to move to high-value sectors limits economic growth.

To use an analogy, it's like pruning a tree. In the short term, the tree is smaller, because you've cut back in some areas. But those cut backs are necessary to stimulate growth in the long term. Without those cuts, the tree won't grow as large and may even die.

Let's also use automobiles as a historical example. Before cars, people still needed transportation. They just used horses and buggies. As cars replaced the horse and buggy, the horse and buggy manufactures were hurt. Consumers no longer needed their product (at least not on such a large scale). Employees lost jobs. Large businesses closed or were forced to retool. This is the kind of economic reordering that happens everyday in the free market. And for consumers, it's good that this happens.

Unfortunately, the government often prevents the necessary corrections from happening.

While it's good for consumers in the long run for recessions and corrections to happen, economic downturns can be painful in the present. And politicians, citing misguided economic theories, are eager to look like they're doing something to help. Politicians offer bailouts and stimulus packages that they claim will jumpstart the economy and decrease unemployment.

While stimulus packages, bailouts and creating bubble markets may work in the short term, they do not create sustainable economic growth. This is because scarce resources are not transferred from low-value products to high-value ones, as explained above.

Politicians or the Federal Reserve guided by Keynesian economics, pay little attention to the idea of long-term consequences. Unfortunately, for politicians this often makes sense for selfish reasons. Politicians want to get re-elected. By the time long-term consequences hit, it is likely a different politician will have to take the unpopular steps to deal with the mess they have created. Ironically, the politicians who actually created the mess may be remembered fondly for the good times they oversaw. The Federal Reserve faces political pressure to make sure the economy keeps going strong.

Because politicians and the Federal Reserve bowed to the political pressure in 2002 to improve things in the short run, we are now suffering the long-run economic consequences.

The stimulus bill and bailouts are simply a doubling down on our past mistakes. We must let individuals in the market shift scarce resources from low-value products to high-value ones, or our long-term economic growth will continue to be stunted.

Monty Python meets President Obama meets healthcare

So funny. It'd be funnier if it weren't so true. If you don't get the parody, there's a clip of the "I'm not dead yet" scene after the jump.

For more something for substantive, but not as funny, take an international tour of wait times in countries with socialized medicine.

And the good news is that the soon-to-be proposed public plan will only cost $4 trillion over the next 10 years.

The current health care "reforms" would be the ultimate lose-lose — destroy the greatest system of health care and medical advancement in the world while putting us trillions more dollars in debt.

(h/t Hotair)

(Slight language warning for a bad word at the end of the clip)

Obama: National unemployment to reach 10% this year

What? I thought the $787 billion stimulus bill that no one had time to read was supposed to lower unemployment. (The "Recovery Plan" in the chart is the stimulus bill, and all the numbers in blue came from Obama's economic team.)


Silly me.

President Barack Obama said the U.S. unemployment rate will reach 10 percent this year, even as the economy begins to emerge from the recession.

“You’re starting to see the engines of the economy turn,” Obama said today in an interview with Bloomberg Television at the White House. “It’s going to take a long time -- we had a huge de-leveraging that took place.”

Obama said the jobless rate may keep rising even though the economy may start expanding “shortly” as confidence rebounds. The U.S. unemployment rate hasn’t been 10 percent or higher since 1983.

“What you’ve seen is that the pace of job loss has slowed,” the president said. “The economy is going to turn around, but as you know, jobs are a lagging indicator and we’ve got to produce 150,000 jobs every month just to keep pace, just to flatten this out.”

Since President Obama's stimulus plan worked so well, what's he going to do for an encore?

“I’m confident that if we take the steps that are necessary on health care, on energy, on education, if we get a strong financial regulatory system in place so that people have confidence in the markets again, that we will end up seeing recovery shortly,” Obama said.

Wow. After a success like the stimulus bill, what could go wrong?

Sen. Coburn: Stimulus bill full of waste

Shocking.

Repairs for rural bridges, an under-highway safe crossing for turtles and efforts to protect the sage grouse population are among 100 projects a Republican senator pointed to Monday as questionable federal stimulus spending.

The list by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., includes projects others would identify as ideal for creating jobs and benefiting generations of Americans: skateboard parks, streetscapes, upgrades of park facilities, bike trails and parking garages.

Coburn's list is partially a collection of news stories that questioned local projects to be funded under President Barack Obama's economic recovery program. The White House has promoted the program by selecting favorable newspaper stories.

One of the most fiscally conservative senators, Coburn cited the repair of 37 rural bridges in Wisconsin that average little more than 500 vehicles apiece each day - with one carrying no more than 10 cars a day. The projects jumped over larger, urban repairs because they were "shovel ready."…

An administration spokesman said the stimulus program already is a great success.

Ed DeSeve, senior adviser to the president for Recovery Act implementation, said, "We have approved more than 20,000 Recovery Act projects to get Americas economy moving again.

The White House sure did get the economy moving — in the wrong direction. The Obama administration spin that it has "created or saved" over 150,000 jobs is completely bogus.

Sen. Coburn's list reveals some of the problems with the federal government's attempts to jumpstart the economy. It takes your money and gives it to people and projects based on political connections rather than economic value.

Sen. Coburn's list is just another reminder that we, the people, aren't getting what we paid for.

Warren Hardy resigns from the Nevada Senate

And becomes a highly paid lobbyist.

Now, your initial reaction is probably the same as mine was. "Typical politician. He's just selling out and going to cash in on the connections he's made over the years." Others in the blogosphere have also had that reaction.

But the idea of Hardy selling out doesn't seem to be accurate.

State Sen. Warren Hardy, R-Las Vegas, is resigning his seat today.

This ends back-and-forth speculation in Nevada political circles about whether Hardy would seek re-election in 2010.

Hardy, who is also president of the Associated Builders and Contractors, said he needed to cut costs at the trade association by ending lobbying and consulting contracts and doing the work himself.

Hardy's job as the president of ABC already pays him over $200,000 a year.

So while it's true that Hardy is resigning to become a lobbyist, he's going to be lobbying as part of a job he already had. He could have stayed in the Senate and made the same amount he's going to make now working as a lobbyist.

Unless someone has information that Hardy is going to get a ridiculous raise, the idea that Hardy is somehow selling out seems more smoke than fire.

In California, sales tax is more stable than its income or business tax

Sen. Horsford and other big-government proponents are already trying to convince you that Nevada needs a broad-based tax to stabilize the revenue base. They've even created a tax study to try and provide some intellectual ammunition for it.

Instead of dealing with hypotheticals, let's look at California, a state with sales, income and business taxes. How has the economic downturn affected its revenues?

The state's revenues from personal income taxes tumbled by 39.3 percent in May from a year earlier while revenues from corporate taxes fell by 52.1 percent and revenues from sales taxes sagged by 7.6 percent, according to a report released by Chiang's office.

Sen. Horsford, call your office! The sales tax was by far the most stable of all the taxes.

The bigger point is this: California has sales, income and business taxes, but it is less than 50 days away from a financial meltdown.

This is a direct refutation of all the "stable tax base" posturing that Nevada has heard in the last few months and is going to hear for the next two years. Having more sources of tax revenue does not lead to a more stable revenue stream and lower budget deficits.

A diverse tax code does not help, and the reason is simple: Diverse tax codes give state governments easier access to more money — dollars politicians can spend with little or no taxpayer accountability. Facing fewer limits on spending growth, states are significantly more likely to spend at unsustainable rates until the inevitable budget crunches arrive.

If Sen. Horsford and other proponents of the tax study are sincere about stabilizing the revenue base and not just trying to take more of your money, any new tax they propose should be revenue-neutral. That is, for every dollar collected by a new tax source, an existing tax should be lowered by a dollar.

Problem is, you can't trust these politicians, even when they give you their word.

Best of the Web (Nevada edition)

Dullard Mush: Will the real Dean Heller please stand up? (Twitter edition).

Jim Rose: Know nothing? You're hired!

A great idea from Needs of the Many: Obama should regulate the pay of union bosses. Where's a little government intervention when you really need it?

Chuck Muth: The Sun endorses vouchers ... for government cars, not children.

Kickin' up Dust!: Could Tweeting lead to more responsible government?

CityLife blog: Connecting the dots between Reid, Rogich and a train to no where.

Shamelessly Google bombing a trending story at Right of Course.

Test your knowledge of the 2009 Nevada Legislative Session with the RGJ's quiz.

Wall Street Journal: When sleep leaves you tired. If anyone has tried out the Zeo device, I would love to know what you think.

If you have any suggestions for next week's Best of the Web (Nevada edition), please feel free to leave a comment or e-mail me at vj [at] npri [dot] org.

Talk on Nevada: Discussing the Governmental Service Tax

Talk on Nevada interviews NPRI Fiscal Analyst Geoffrey Lawrence on sneaky Governmental Service Tax portion of the record-setting, secret, job-killing, billion dollar tax increase the legislature passed at the end of last month.

For more information, check out the commentary Geoff wrote on this subject, New tax a wrong turn for Nevada.

Rove: How to stop socialized health care

And yes, that's what the Obama administration wants, no matter what the spin is.

The good news is the Obama administration doesn't always get what it wants and that Karl Rove has outlined five arguments against socialized medicine in today's WSJ.

Second, a public option will undercut private insurers and pass the tab to taxpayers and health providers just as it does in existing government-run programs. For example, Medicare pays hospitals 71% and doctors 81% of what private insurers pay.

Who covers the rest? Government passes the bill for the outstanding balance to providers and families not covered by government programs. This cost-shifting amounts to a forced subsidy. Families pay about $1,800 more a year for someone else's health care as a result, according to a recent study by Milliman Inc. It's also why many doctors limit how many Medicare patients they take: They can afford only so much charity care…

Fifth, the public option puts government firmly in the middle of the relationship between patients and their doctors. If you think insurance companies are bad, imagine what happens when government is the insurance carrier, with little or no competition and no concern you'll change to another company.

In other words, the public option is just phony. It's a bait-and-switch tactic meant to reassure people that the president's goals are less radical than they are. Mr. Obama's real aim, as some candid Democrats admit, is a single-payer, government-run health-care system.

The other three points are just as good.

And, if you live in Nevada and are interested in hearing more from Karl Rove, have I got a shameless plug for you.

The Nevada Policy Research Institute has just announced that Karl Rove, the Wall Street Journal columnist, Fox News contributor and "Architect" of President Bush's two campaigns, is going to be the keynote speaker at NPRI's 18th Anniversary Celebration. Wow, we're getting old. Agree or disagree with Rove, I guarantee it'll be interesting.

We'd like you to come — I told you it was a shameless plug.

You can register online or download, print and mail in a registration form.

I hope to see you there.

Gibbons vetoes funding for interim study of state's tax commission

And Raggio promises to fund it anyway.

Gibbons finished Tuesday processing dozens of bills sent to his office in the final days of the legislative session that concluded last week. Among the five measures he vetoed this week were Senate Bill 143, which would have provided $500,000 to fund state Senate Minority Leader Bill Raggio's interim study of the state's tax structure; and Assembly Bill 503, which would have created a panel to craft a better way to fund road projects.

Raggio, R-Reno, said contingency funds will be available to pay for the study.

What? Nevada has contingency funds?

I thought this budget was bare bones. And you probably would, too, because the media and legislators who were intent on passing a record-setting, job-killing, billion dollar, secret tax increase said it again and again and again and again.

Nope, looks like the legislature has plenty of money stashed somewhere to fund a study that will call for taking more of your money.

Just another reminder why you shouldn't trust Nevada's "collection of irredeemable nincompoops, borderline criminals and self-interested cowards," their doomsday predictions or even their written statements.


The Nevada Legislature's definition of a bare-bones, taxpayer-funded dinner.

Video: Visualizing the jobs lost after Obama’s stimulus

But with the mythical “saved or created” standard, Obama’s able to claim he’s “saved or created” 150,000 jobs. The pennies and the facts tell a different story though.

(h/t Needs of the Many)

Reid on a new 'track'

Earlier this year, Republican powerbroker Sig Rogich endorsed Sen. Harry Reid's re-election effort. And today Reid has unexpectedly announced that he no longer wants a government-funded maglev train between LA and Las Vegas, which he had publicly supported for years ─ and he now favors a new train between Victorville and Las Vegas, in which Rogich and his business partners have already invested millions.

All right, let's step back, look at this from the beginning and see if it could really be what it seems.

Rogich is a big-time Republican donor and has helped numerous Republican candidates in Nevada get elected over the years, most recently Gov. Jim Gibbons. Rogich also worked on the Reagan and Bush 41 campaigns. The man has connections, experience and money.

In February, Rogich endorsed Democratic Sen. Harry Reid for re-election. And last week, a group called Republicans for Reid, which includes Rogich, announced its endorsement of Reid. By itself, that's no big deal, as people occasionally support candidates from the other side of the political aisle.

Fast-forward to today. Reid has just announced that he no longer supports a maglev train from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and instead wants a cheaper, private alternative.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader and an ardent supporter of high speed rail systems, said today he no longer favors construction of a maglev -- or magnetic levitation -- train between Anaheim and Las Vegas.

Instead, the Nevada Democrat said he now favors a conventional high speed train between Victorville and Las Vegas -- a privately funded venture that is farther along in the planning process and cheaper to build than the maglev proposal, which has been studied for almost three decades.

“I've been working on this for 30 years," Reid said. "We’ve gotten nowhere. Maglev projects have been abandoned around the world. It’s time to stop talking and start doing something.”

The proposed DesertXpress is a steel-wheeled train that would travel up to 150 mph along the heavily traveled I-15 corridor. It would provide an alternative to motorists who often drive more than six hours one way during weekends to reach Las Vegas from the Los Angeles area. The 183-mile system is estimated to cost $3.5 billion to $4 billion.

In contrast, the system proposed by the American Maglev Group, which would rely on government funding and bonds sold to investors, would run 270 miles and cost at least $12 billion to build. A first leg is planned for Las Vegas to Primm on the Nevada-California line.

This marks a major turnaround from a few years ago and even just the past few months, when Sen. Reid was a big supporter of the maglev project. In 2008, he secured $45 million for it, and this year he supported the $8 billion in stimulus funds that could have been used for the train.

However, the bill does provide $8 billion for unspecified high-speed and intercity passenger rail projects, more than three times as much as allocated in earlier versions of the legislation…

In a town that loves to connect the dots, the funding increase raised suspicions that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who played a key role in writing the bill, pushed for it in order to promote home-state interests, namely the Anaheim-to-Las Vegas project…

A Reid spokesman said the money was not being earmarked for any specific project but would be available on a competitive basis. "This was a major priority for President Obama, and Sen. Reid as a conferee supported it," said Jon Summers.

Aside from the interesting note that Sen. Reid is suddenly concerned about reckless government spending, this would appear to be a non-story ─ except that one of the backers of the "high speed train between Victorville and Las Vegas" that Reid now enthusiastically supports is … Sig Rogich. From February 2009 in the Review-Journal:

Backers of DesertXpress, among them Nevada GOP powerbroker Sig Rogich, are pouring millions into their project and courting Nevada lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., a longtime maglev supporter.

A press release by DesertXpress identifies Rogich as "President of Rogich Communications Group, a partner and spokesman for DesertXpress Enterprises."

So Rogich, a prominent and active Nevada Republican, endorses Reid, and a few months later Reid reverses a position he's publicly held for years, which directly benefits a business into which Rogich and his partners have invested millions.

Reid’s spokesman downplayed the connection, saying the senator has worked in Nevada for decades, and is “connected to people on just about every side of every issue.”

Riiiiiiiiiight. Move along now. Nothing to see here.

(h/t CityLife blog)

Las Vegas is better than Shelbyville

In 1993 a young writer named Conan O’Brian penned an episode of the hit TV show The Simpsons. Titled Marge vs. the Monorail, the episode was one where the town of Springfield finds itself with surplus cash, and the townspeople decide they must spend the money on something. A fast-talking traveling salesman named Lyle Lanley sells the people of Springfield on the idea that they need to have a monorail — telling them, each time they get an idea that maybe the monorail is a bad idea, that he will just take his project to Shelbyville.

Springfield, not wanting to be outdone by Shelbyville, is stampeded and blindly agrees to build the monorail. Of course, nothing is as it seems and the monorail is nothing but snake oil allowing Lanley to get rich before he skips town to sell this fad to the next town of suckers.

Perhaps unwittingly, the Simpsons episode basically captured all politics in a nutshell. Someone produces a crazy and expensive idea, which the politicians love. The people are told they just can’t live without it and oh, by the way, the project is really expensive. Not surprisingly the project doesn’t live up to its potential, a few rich people get richer, taxpayers are stuck with the bill, and politicians — in order to build their “look what I accomplished as your leader” resumes — eagerly look for the next scam to sell to taxpayers.

Light rail and high speed rail are old fads that the Obama administration is trying to resuscitate. Recently the president announced a $13 billion plan for (moderate) speed trains that would create between 100-600 miles of “high speed” rail lines while also rebuilding existing freight lines. Conventional Amtrak diesel trains would carry passengers on regular freight rail – not as exciting as a maglev and not as expensive. More recently Senator Harry Reid threw his support behind Desert Xpress, a “high” speed train that would run between Las Vegas and always-exciting Victorville, California. Desert Xpress claims that under the public-private partnership plan it is pursuing, “the private sector provides and operates the system at no cost to the taxpayers … and assumes all risks including performance, ridership, and revenue.” The role of the “public” — i.e., various state and local governments — would be to issue permits for the project and approve “shared use of existing transportation rights of way.” Nevertheless, with $13 billion promised by the Obama administration in support for high speed rail, it’s hard to believe Desert Xpress won’t end up in the line for tax dollars.

If the project does end up 100 percent privately funded, it will be entirely laudable — meaning people are willing to bet their own money that the high speed rail will work. On the other hand, if they seek government subsidies it means they expect the project will likely fail and are trying to protect their own pocketbooks by making taxpayers pay the freight.

Obama’s plan, itself, is a major recipe for failure, as a forthcoming NPRI study will document in detail. When incredibly expensive projects are considerably less effective than far-cheaper alternatives, you have to wonder exactly what is cooking with our political leaders.

Unfortunately, the answer is as simple as the Simpsons episode. Nearly always these people are selling us snake oil — expensive and ineffective fads whereby they get rich and we get stuck with the bill.

*UPDATE – June 14, 2009. It now appears as if DesertXpress will be seeking taxpayer support. We are not surprised.

What have you 'created or saved' recently?

The Obama administration is so proud of the 150,000 jobs it has already "created or saved" with the stimulus bill that it has announced it is going to speed up stimulus spending to "create or save" 600,000 new jobs in the next 100 days. At a time when the national unemployment rate has skyrocketed to 9.4 percent, you'd think the media would laugh this claim off in a heartbeat. But you'd be wrong.

Forgetting the obvious media bias revealed in this case, the real question becomes: What have you "created or saved" recently?

Personally, I have "created or saved" enough carbon offsets to solve global warming (if it actually existed).

How?

Well, I didn't leave my car running while I was at work today. I've decided not to try to burn down the Sequoia National Forest and the Amazon Rainforest. I've also decided not to open 1,000 coal-fired power plants in my backyard. Hey, that's a lot of restraint given that everybody else is doing it. I'm also encouraging all the liberals I know to join the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. (That's a joke, of course, but incredibly, the website isn't.)

I'd keep going, but I don't want Al Gore to read this and feel compelled to give me a hug or invite me over to his high-energy-use house. I think the title Sir Victor Joecks, Slayer of Global Warming (Hysteria) and Befriender of All that is Right with Humanity would be reward enough.

Sure, I'm making things up. But so is the Obama administration. And since facts aren't stopping anyone anymore, I'll ask again: What have you "saved or created" lately?

The media, biased? III

And if that's not enough proof for you, check out these articles on the media's reporting bias:

Love or lust,Obama and the fawning press need to get a room and The media fall for phony 'jobs' claim

(h/t Hotair)

Government Motors advertisement

Those folks over at despair.com have created a great new ad for Government Motors. See it here.

It's on: See if you can beat my score in 2009 Nevada Legislative quiz

The quiz is just 14 questions long and courtesy of the Reno Gazette-Journal.

See if you can best my totally beatable score of …

12 out of 14.

I won't lie, I was pretty embarrassed. The best thing you could say about that score is that it's good enough for government work.

Florida wins again

*Graph by Dr. Matthew Ladner

There is no shortage of ways for Nevada’s education system to look bad — especially if your only measure is spending. However, NPRI has stumbled across more evidence that suggests how much you spend matters far less than how effectively you spend.

According to U.S. Census Bureau reports for the 2003-04 school year, Nevada ranks 49th in K-12 education expenses per $1,000 of personal income. Specifically, Nevada spends just $34.43 per pupil for every $1,000 of per-capita personal income of state residents, taken collectively. Under this metric, Alaska is the biggest spender at $62.92 per pupil. That means Alaskans devote almost twice as many dollars, per capita, toward education. The national average is $43.68.

So who earns the dreaded 50th place? Florida — which spent a mere $34.36 per $1,000. Yet Florida, as you may recall, is the same innovative state where Hispanic students outperform the statewide average of all students in 16 other states. And these states include not only Nevada, but also the very white state of Oregon and those big spenders up in Alaska.

Florida’s schools have improved so much that their minority students perform as well, or better, than minority students in some of the wealthiest states in the country — including big-spending Massachusetts. And non-minority students weren’t left behind: They improved, too. Florida proves that how education dollars are spent is much more important than how much is spent.

Fortunately for Nevadans, both the Clark County and Washoe County school districts are experimenting with empowerment schools — public schools that put their focus on effectively spending the money, as judged by the principal at the school, as an alternative to Nevada’s current command-and-control model, where district central offices try to run everything, with significant waste of dollars as a consequence.

Nevada has only a handful of empowerment schools at present, but it’s a start.

Talk on Nevada: Nevada Legislature's education reform efforts

Talk on Nevada interviews NPRI Education Analyst Patrick R. Gibbons. Patrick discusses the recent efforts made by Nevada's Legislature to reform education.

Patrick and NPRI Vice President of Policy Steven Miller also released a commentary yesterday on the missed opportunities for education reform in the 2009 session.

Horsford: My word's good, until I change my mind

That's a paraphrase, but it's also the take away. The trend of lying governmental and elected officials continues.

Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford was on Jon Ralston's show Tuesday, and here's what happened (segment 2).

Ralston read a quote Horsford gave at a September 2008 Review-Journal editorial board meeting. "I won't support tax increases — not when the private sector is losing revenue and losing jobs … The general fund needs to be managed in a way that doesn't allow growth beyond population growth and inflation." (And note the private sector is losing more jobs today than it was then.)

Ralston then asked Horsford why the Legislature wasn't upfront about raising taxes.

Horsford replied: "Well, a couple of things. First, when I made those comments, no one could have predicted how bad the economy was going to get."

Ralston: "It wasn't great at the time."

Horsford: "It wasn't great, but it wasn't as bad as it became during the legislative session, number one. Number two is that we don't want to raise taxes. We weren't committed to raising taxes."

Take away: Horsford's word is good, until he has to actually act on it.

Imagine what this kind of (lack of) integrity would look like in other aspects of life.

For the married, it would be like having your spouse say, "Sorry for cheating on you. When we made our vows, I just couldn't have anticipated how attractive my co-worker would be and how fat you'd become."

For the soldier, it would be like having your battle buddy say, "Sorry for running away there and not covering your back once the shooting started. I just couldn't have anticipated how scary it would be."

For the child, it would be like having your parent say, "Sorry for abandoning you. When I decided to have kids, I just couldn't have anticipated what a pain you would be."

Just another reason not to trust Nevada's "collection of irredeemable nincompoops, borderline criminals and self-interested cowards" with more of your money for government programs that make things worse, not better.

You can't hide from government, they'll fine you.

An amateur video, filmed by yours truly, for the Right.org video contest. Filmed right here in Nevada. If you are curious, yes, that is exactly how rough a Jeep rides.

Raggio's no-new-tax stance in writing

I only bring this up because I'm a glutton for punishment, I'm on a "government officials are liars" kick and I know you want to feel the pain and disappointment of Sen. Raggio leading the negotiations for Nevada's record-setting, billion-dollar, job-killing, secret tax increases all over again. Oh, and the push for new taxes in 2011 has already started.

Raggio's no-new-taxes statement is an a letter (PDF warning) to Chancellor Rogers about the higher education budget and was sent on June 6, 2008. The money quote is on the last page.



"This is not the time to talk about increasing taxes." Now, it's a year later, but overall the economy is worse today than it was in June 2008.

So, Senator, why was this the time to talk about increasing taxes?

Death or Job Loss?

In Geoffrey Lawrence’s recent interview with Jon Ralston, Ralston asked if anti-tax critics were being ridiculous when they suggested that people might lose their jobs or businesses might fail if taxes are increased. Ralston pointed out that the tax increase was incremental. For example, a small to medium-size business may only see its payroll tax increase $1,000 to $3,000 for the year, while the average consumer will, supposedly, only be paying an extra 35 cents per every $100 he spends.

Geoff correctly pointed out that businesses operate on the margin. Profits aren’t always in double-digit percentages — rather, profits can be razor thin. For some struggling businesses, even the smallest tax increase can mean the difference between surviving and going out of business altogether. Essentially, Geoff made the case that it is not ridiculous, but highly plausible to suggest that some people may lose their job or that some businesses may go under.

Ralston didn’t seem to agree, but he did allow Mike Ginsburg of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN) to get away with the most ridiculous statement of the evening. Ginsburg, echoing Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, suggested that if taxes weren’t raised people were going to die.

Which seems more ridiculous to you?

1) Raise taxes and some people may lose their job.
2) Don’t raise taxes and some people will die.