Decent person's urge to do the right thing dumbfounds other children at biennial Carson City band camp

Normally, I would put this under the Impurely Maven page with the other re-posted stuff by other serious people. However, Hugh Jackson’s comments and observations regarding our efforts to make sense at the Nevada Assembly Taxation Committee hearing on AB 428 the other day deserves a wider audience - like everybody who is not getting a check from the mining industry.

I sat there watching the glazed over looks of the Committee members as Hugh bravely soldiered on through chapter and verse of just what the foreign mining behemoths weren’t paying to the state of Nevada. They didn’t give a rats ass. The mining lobbyists in the room were busy checking their Blackberries and taking bathroom breaks. They didn’t give a rats ass either - they know that they’ve butter the right slices of bread and that they’re probably pretty safe.

I’ve tried to make the point to one and all on ‘our side’ of this, that taking the facts straight to the electorate via the public media - even if we have to pay for it - might be the only way to get mining to pay something - anything! Silly me, I somehow remain naive enough to think that average people, once armed with the sad truth of how mining has stuck it up the backside of Nevada’s citizens, might get angry enough to insist on passage of AB 428 in addition to Ms. Pierce’s other bills to take mining out the Constitution and otherwise hold them accountable.

You’d think that gaming might want to help push this trolley up the hill, since they’re actually paying a higher effective tax rate despite the fact that their revenues are down in the toilet due to the economy.

Sign me ‘still hoping for a miracle’.

-maven

Post by Hugh Jackson, The Las Vegas Gleaner

Decent person’s urge to do the right thing dumbfounds other children at biennial Carson City band camp

A legislative committee held a hearing the other day on Assemblywoman Peggy Pierce’s bill to make mining pay some taxes for a change. After months of batting their big doe eyes at legislators during romantic dinners, pretending to be impressed with the intelligence and wit of lawmakers and otherwise softening up/wearing down your elected officials, mining lobbyists used the hearing to fill the air with artificial arguments and disingenuous diversions designed to lead the committee far off into the weeds and well away from any trenchant discussion. For the most part it worked, and questions asked of the industry’s lobbyists tended to range from the innocuous to the irrelevant.

If Pierce’s bill is ever sent to the Assembly floor and legislators vote on it, people would find out: What do elected officials value more, wealthy investors around the world with huge financial interests in multinational mining corporations, or Nevada?

Ha ha trick question. The answer is none of the above.

Read the rest at Hugh’s website. The man’s trying to make a living while telling the actual truth. That deserves your support.