"This struggle may be a moral one or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did; it never will." (See below.)
1997-2001
Archive
Sen.
Joe Neal stands alone, breaking the Silence of the Lambs
--- Commentary by Steve Sebelius,Veteran Las Vegas Review-Journal Political
Columnist
Foredoomed bill mandates casino non-smoking areas
Top casino lobbyist actually admits existence of gambling addiction
Casinos boom profits on Wall Street, plead poverty at home
Gov. Guinn threatens reprisals against gaming tax petition supporters
Dream on: Gamblers & Governor may move toward
compromise
on casino tax hike
State
study confirms that gambling costs government more than it pays
Federal study says curtail gambling expansion
This
item may not load. The NGISC site has apparently been taken down.
Just as well. The industry neutered it. You might try a web search.
Last
chance to stop local corporate welfare
Barbwire by Barbano / Daily Sparks Tribune / 9-7-1997
For more details, go to Sen. Joe Neal's website
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In recent
legislative sessions, the gambling-industrial complex has kept
its taxes low, opened large tax loopholes for itself and facilitated
major tax and fee increases on everyone else. |
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Nevada casinos
pay the lowest state levies in the nation, all of which are fully
deductible on federal income tax returns. Our
gross gaming tax, frozen since 1987, remains lowest in the world. |
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The Nevada gambling
industry also diverts hundreds of millions in public money toward
casino promotion. Because of this ongoing casino tax skim, booming
cities like Reno and Las Vegas cannot afford adequate parks or many
other public services. Reno's potholed streets have become legendary. |
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Because of four
decades of chronic corporate welfare giveaways extracted by the casino
industry, Nevada communities have been pressured to raise local taxes
and fees. The 2001 Nevada Legislature is processing legislation to
force counties to raise property taxes to bail out state government.
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Nevada property
taxes have been rising faster than the rate of inflation due in large
part to communities being forced to deal with growth without the funds
to pay for it. |
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Nevada's tax collections
ebb and flow with the economy. Regressive sales and use taxes surpassed
gaming tax collections in 1998. Only a quarter of Silver State sales
taxes come from visitors. Nevada's freshman governor and top gambling
executives, echoed by an increasing chorus of news media, have called
for a "more stable" tax base. The most often mentioned alternatives
involve re-imposing the sales tax on groceries, a sales tax on services,
hiking residential property taxes or a combination of all. |
These issues are now reaching critical mass. Casinos Out of Politics has been formed to win substantive campaign finance reform for voters and candidates, equity for taxpayers and justice for casino workers.
Reducing the gambling-industrial complex's stranglehold on Nevada's political structure will not be easy. However, big, fat, rich targets move slowly and are easy to both hit and dodge.
Let's put some sweat equity into buying an election for ourselves just once.
Be well. Raise hell.
Andrew Barbano, COP on the Beat
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*"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. "If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder & lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. "This struggle may be a moral one or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did; it never will." -- Frederick Douglass, speaking in Canandaigua, NY, 3 August 1857 |
Dudley Do-Right, Nell Fenwick and Snidely Whiplash cartoon characters © Jay Ward Productions
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