Budget Watch Nevada

In honor of Gibbons’ latent call for cutting state spending by $111,800,000, the folks at www.BudgetWatchNevada.com have recommended common-sense approaches to paring down bloated government spending (and taxing) levels.

Check it out, and forward the link to your friendly legislator with a note to adopt some of the practical changes contained therein. And then feel free to add your comments on this blog.

Most of the bills considered by the legislature are, at best, misguided and feckless, and, more often, blatantly discriminatory.

Take this one for example, where the bill’s sponsors discriminate against those of us who are under 60 years of age. According to the Review-Journal story, “AB87 expands an existing law requiring reporting elder abuse to include employees of financial institutions that deal directly with someone 60 or older or that review their financial transactions.”

Is the correct response to say that the rest of us need protection too?

No, the appropriate response is to say that is a stupid piece of proposed legislation because it arbitrarily decides when someone is more of a victim than someone else simply because of his age.

Further, proving abuse is very, very difficult and any accusation would be subjective.

There are plenty of laws out there already that address taking advantage of someone, regardless of the victim’s age. We also have a civil court system in place for the worst offenses.

Our beloved legislators love to grandstand about how they are defending our rights by legislating against discrimination, but typically they are guilty of the problem they propose to fix.

Once tax dollars have been excised from your wallet at the local watering hole or grocery store, or through your phone bill or car registration fee for use by bureaucrats, it is “their” money to spend, not yours. In fact, it never really was your money; you are only allowed to borrow it for awhile until it gets to where it belongs, in the “public” coffers.

This idea was admitted, though perhaps not consciously, by Mike Dayton, Governor Gibbons’ chief of staff in an article in the R-J yesterday.

When asked about Take Back Nevada’s reasonable request to limit state spending to a modest increase based on population growth and inflation, Dayton responded, “The governor’s looking at what’s in the accounts, what revenue is available and how best to spend the dollars Nevadans have.” This quote is quite informative of the attitude in Carson City.

There’s no mention of fiscal responsibility or accountability, or even a simple “thank you” to those of us who foot the bill. No, now that it’s in their hands, they (the Governor and the Legislature) get to slice the pie as they and their special interest allies deem appropriate. After all, it’s their money, silly.

AB128 would require soft drink and snack food companies to disclose gifts, payments, and other benefits given to convenience stores and fast food restaurants. I think this is a great idea.

Have you ever wondered while driving up to Taco Bell why they always have Pepsi signs in the window and never Coca Cola signs? I think we need a law that REQUIRES such a restaurant to disclose in writing to all patrons that Taco Bell is or was related to PepsiCo, and that the restaurant may gain some financial benefit by only selling one company’s soft drinks.

Same for my local convenience store. When I go in there for some potato chips, I notice that they always have special racks for certain brands, but not my favorite “all natural” corn chips. Something’s fishy. I think I’ll call my friendly assemblyman and ask him to demand that the C-stores tell me up front who supplies their chips and whether there is any financial incentive to do so.

Does all this sound crazy? Now go back to the introductory paragraph and replace “soft drink and snack food companies” with “prescription drug companies” and replace “convenience stores and fast food restaurants” with “doctors and health care providers” and you will see what the legislative committee is really up to: burdening the medical profession with more regulations.

As in food choices, the free market should decide how doctors will provide products and services. Let the buyer beware and let him do the proper research into his own health care choices . . . and keep the government out of the transaction.

This week in the legislature, the Assembly Health and Human Services committee is due to review AB150, which would restrict the sale of ingredients used in making methamphetamines. Also in the hopper: AB149, which would appropriate $2 million of your hard-earned tax dollars for anti-meth “programs.”

Let’s think about this. Two million dollars? Who, exactly, is going to benefit from such expenditures? Addicts? Recreational users? I doubt it. We don’t have the resources or manpower to track them all down and take them to court and arrest them for abusing their own bodies (all while harming no one else). The money will be (mis)spent on bureaucrats and social workers to design, implement, and monitor programs. These people are addicts of another bent — they are addicted to taxpayer money and funding for unproven, often unnecessary, programs.

Some law enforcement control freaks would also get some money, likely for new gear or equipment or pain-inducing weapons, not of which really helps the actual “victim” in all this, the misguided user of a pernicious drug.

Stop the war on drugs. Let’s call for a war on government growth and power addiction.