Thursday, February 27, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Editor's Note: Hey, what about me?

The liberals are coming out of the woodwork!

Last week's cover story, "Are There Any Liberals in Nevada?," was accompanied by a list of the state's liberals. There were 47 names on the list, which seemed like a lot for this very conservative state. But it's clear there are at least a few more liberals who should have been mentioned.

The first message I received was from my old friend and colleague Mike Smith, editorial cartoonist for the Las Vegas Sun. Apparently none too pleased to have been left off the list, Smith slugged his e-mail to me: "ASS EYES." Smith should have been on the list, despite his penchant for auto racing.

Checking my e-mails Monday morning, I found a message from Tony Macklin, a local movie critic, who said omitting Al Bernstein, a sports talk show host on KBAD 920-AM, is a grievous error. "What is especially interesting is that Al announces his liberalism often even though much of his audience is conservative," Macklin writes.

Another e-mail came from Kimberly Chapman, who handles website duties for Citizen Alert. Chapman was appalled that Citizen Alert director Peggy Maze Johnson didn't make the list.

"I should think people devoting their time to stopping the Yucca dump ought to rank somewhere in the `worth mentioning' range!" Chapman writes. "You've got Peggy Maze Johnson quoted in an article elsewhere in the paper, for goodness sake, but don't mention her on the list."

Johnson may very well be a liberal, but simply opposing Yucca Mountain isn't a qualification. It's quite the bipartisan issue these days.

Chapman didn't stop there. "What about former Citizen Alert activist Kalynda Tilges, who has been taking folks on the People's Tour of Yucca for a good long time and now heads up Shundahai?"

She got me there. No doubt Tilges certainly should have been on the list.

Got a phone call Monday morning from former District Judge Jeff Sobel, who said he was hurt by the oversight. He says he's one of the original lefties in Las Vegas. He lost his last re-election bid in part, he believes, because his challenger, Jackie Glass, hammered him as being "soft on crime."

Which, Sobel admits, is true in some respects. For example, he openly advocates legalization of all drugs, and while on the bench he pushed for drug offenders to get treatment over prison time. Yeah, Sobel should have been included.

Finally, someone snidely wondered why I put myself at the top of the liberals list, suggesting, perhaps, that I'm the King of the Nevada Liberals or something. The truth, however, is I put my name at the top in the interest of full disclosure. In reality, the King of the Nevada Liberals is...a secret. You have to know the secret handshake first to get that information.

* * *

Freshman Assemblyman Josh Griffin made a strong bid for the Nevada liberals list last week when he announced that he will vote for tax increases to balance the state budget.

"I don't think anybody is excited about a $1 billion tax increase," Griffin, the 31-year-old son of two-time Reno Mayor Jeff Griffin, told the Review-Journal. "But we can't cut services to the level it hurts, like having prisoners on the street and schoolteachers laid off. We do have to make some cuts, but we definitely have to have a tax increase."

What's particularly interesting about this statement is that Griffin is a Republican. From Henderson. You don't get much more conservative than a Henderson Republican.

Griffin surely will draw the wrath of most fellow Republicans (except for Gov. Kenny Guinn), but he deserves a ton of credit for bursting out of the political bubble that is legislative politics and being straight with his constituents.

That's more than can be said for most Democratic lawmakers, who have been reluctant to join forces with Guinn, hoping, it seems, that their silence will serve them well in the next election.

Even more disheartening, though, is the Democrats have failed to offer an alternative to Guinn's proposal, which contains some blatantly regressive elements that Democrats should oppose.

Rather than sitting on their hands and hoping the Republicans come out looking like the tax-raisers, the Democrats should be coming out with an alternative plan that is more palatable to voters. A recent R-J-sponsored poll showing strong support for a gross receipts tax and a gaming tax increase and against an amusement tax might be a useful a guide.

Here's what I'd suggest:

Guinn proposes a quarter-percent gross receipts tax on businesses that would exempt the first $450,000 of gross receipts. This means 60 percent of Nevada businesses wouldn't pay anything.

But a good number of small businesses still would pay, and the real intent of the proposal is to make sure the biggies such as Bank of America and Wal-Mart start paying their fair share. So increase the tax to half a percent--still reasonably low--and make the exemption around $1 million. This way, you're hitting up the big guys while leaving most small businesses alone.

Seems like a no-brainer. But this is the Nevada Legislature we're talking about, where freshman Republicans make sense and Democratic veterans cower in the corner.

--GEOFF SCHUMACHER