Dear Nevada Legislature: Please raise revenue!

ProgressNow Nevada has a great petition up, and I hope you will join me in signing it.

Read on:

Nevada is currently facing a 54% budget shortfall, and Governor Sandoval thinks every cent should come from cuts to education and essential services.

Our governor is in a budget Fantasyland.

Nevada is in some of the hardest economic times we’ve ever seen, and Governor Sandoval thinks the way to get out of it is to lop off 70 percent of the higher education budget. Forget about classes and majors – entire campuses will close.

Is this the way to attract new businesses and diversify our economy?

Click on the image aboveTake action today to save our state. Tell lawmakers revenue must be part of the solution by signing the petition below.

We’re calling for a broad-based net profits tax to be paid by the largest corporations in the state, while protecting small businesses.  We’re also urging lawmakers to make mining pay its fair share.

We’ve seen enough of out-of-state corporations taking our resources and our revenue without paying for the services they and their employees need.

We’ve seen enough!  Haven’t you? Take action today.

***Petition language follows***

We the undersigned declare: 

We support a balanced solution to Nevada’s budget crisis a solution that includes new forms of revenue to offset massive cuts that would dismantle our higher education system, cripple our K-12 schools and further undermine our social services.

Specifically, we call for:

1.) Imposing a broad-based business tax on the state’s largest corporations — those with net profits exceeding $500,000 a year.

2.) Taxing foreign-owned mining corporations by eliminating statutory deductions the industry uses to avoid paying their fair share.

3.) An honest discussion of other revenue sources.

Help keep public television and radio the voice of your democracy!

I simply can’t believe my ears. Cutting the entire federal funding for PBS/NPR? Are they fucking nuts? These networks are the voice of our democracy - not beholden to unleashed corporate influence.

Go to 170 Million today and get the whole story - and take action!

The nation's governors discuss the infrastructure

Ed Rendell (D-PA) and Arnold Schwartenegger (R-CA) lead a discussion on America’s crumbling infrastructure and how it should - or must- fit in any budgetary or policy discussion going forward.

America’s infrastructure is in grave disrepair. Analysts have determined that one-third of the nation’s roads are in poor or mediocre condition, and the Federal Highway Administration recently estimated that one out of every four bridges is either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

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Don't pee on my shoes and tell me it's raining: No new taxes?

For once the Reno Gazette-Journal got it right in todays’ op-ed page piece “Don’t believe the anti-tax talk”. The money has to come from somewhere, taxes or fees or something. Like my late boss and advertising man, Chris Demaris, used to say, “you can’t sell from an empty cart.”

According to the Gazette-Journal: ” No one should accept the governor’s rhetoric about not raising taxes on Nevadans, however. There may be no increase in sales or property taxes in Gibbons’ budget; there may be no new business taxes either. But Nevadans will be taxed.”

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Can you say same old, same old? Tired tax recommendations from the dark side

Flipping my way through the ever shrinking Reno Gazette-Journal this morning ( is the RG-J on its’ way through the ‘Looking Glass’?) , I eagerly scanned the state budget article, “Differing solutions offered” for the straight scoop from the Nevada Policy Research Institute.

According to NPRI spokesman, Andy Matthews, “The problem with Nevada is not a revenue problem at all. It’s a spending problem.” Hmmm. That seems to fly straight in the face of the, uh, numbers. But I cut ‘em some slack and read on.

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