Earlier this week, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that Gov. Jim Gibbons had floated the idea of taking tax revenues from local governments and giving it to the state government to spend on programs and services provided by the state rather than by the local governments. The story came out the same morning I was scheduled to appear on Jon Ralston’s “Face to Face” television program, and Ralston, naturally, brought it up in the interview. From Jon’s “Flash” e-newsletter later in the day…
This (proposal) will be interpreted by many folks as a declaration of war on Southern Nevada, as Gibbons being used by Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio to push a rob-local-governments-agenda that will have a disproportionate impact on the Las Vegas Valley. And worse, the RJ inquisitors seemed not to ask – or not report the response if they did – this question: “Governor, I thought you were against more spending and wanted to cut it down to make government live within its means. This does nothing about that.”
Even Chuck Muth, a true fiscal conservative, got that after reading the story. Sayeth Muth: “If you’re a fiscal conservative, you can’t say, ‘No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes,’ without addressing the spending problem. You can’t continue to increase spending 20 percent or, after reductions, 15 percent without raising taxes eventually. Somewhere, somehow, somebody’s got to say, ‘Stop.’ We can’t do everything. We need to start setting priorities.”
Or, as left-wing blogger Hugh Jackson put it: “This is antithetical to conservative philosophy of governing, which is that government which governs best is closest to home. … (The proposal’s) going to succeed in getting a lot of local officials riled up, a lot more opprobrium and nasty things said about the governor. But, it makes no contribution whatsoever to the larger economic problems facing the state and its structural soundness.”
Indeed it does not. And when you get the left and the right agreeing on the idiocy of this idea – as Muth and Jackson did today during a taping of “Face to Face” – then you know it’s transparent to see.
Muth went on in his criticism: “What he (Gibbons) wants to do is the reverse of what conservatives like me want to do at the national level. We shouldn’t be taking money out of Nevada and sending it to Washington, D.C., so they can determine what Nevadans use their tax money for. (Nevadans) should be able to do that … I think local governments need more autonomy. That’s where government is best decided, to make these decisions at the local level. I don’t think it’s a good idea to send money from Las Vegas to Carson City and have them decide what’s best for Las Vegas.”
That’s not me talking, folks. That’s Chuck Muth, conservative.
You can watch the full January 29th interview online HERE
Shortly after the program aired and Flash was published, word went out that the governor had been misinterpreted or had misspoke or had been misunderstood or whatever. And they weren’t very happy with my criticism either. Well, whatever.
I’ve been telling Gibbons folks for over a year now that they should use their extensive statewide campaign email list to make sure their allies are on the same page and that incorrect media reports or stories are immediately corrected, at least with their own supporters. There’s no reason whatsoever in this day and age - thanks to Al Gore inventing the Internet - for the governor to have to rely 100% on getting his side of a story out through the filter of the mainstream media.
If the Review-Journal did, in fact, get some aspect of the governor’s suggestion wrong, someone from the governor’s office should have read the story at 5 a.m. and sent a correction or clarification out to their list of thousands upon thousands of supporters by 6 a.m. Then I would have been armed with their side of the story when the question was brought up at 9 a.m. instead of being forced to only respond to the story itself as published.
I guess it’s somewhat understandable why a Republican governor would be leery of the mainstream press, but it’s inexcusable not to use the Internet to go around the mainstream press and communicate directly with his supporters. The guv’s peeps can get mad at me all they want, but they only have themselves to blame thanks to extending their self-imposed communications bunker mentality to, well…everyone.
Physician, heal thyself.
Posted on February 2nd, 2008 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: Nevada
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