The Nevada Democratic Party and its affiliated unions did a great job turning out voters for the Nov. 4 general election, and placing in the hands of many of those voters endorsement sheets \u201crecommending\u201d how they might vote — all the way down the ballot to the supposedly \u201cnon-partisan\u201d elections for judgeships, school board, etc.<\/p>\n
Some went further. These days, our county registrars will send out an \u201cabsentee ballot\u201d to anyone who requests one, facilitating the completion of such ballots under the supervision of anyone (bosses, union stewards) willing to pressure voters into showing up with their ballots at some appointed time and place, far from the privacy curtains of their neighborhood polling station.<\/p>\n
The Democratic Party also had huge success with its related million-dollar direct-mail campaign against Nevada state Sens. Joe Heck and Bob Beers, who they targeted based on growing Democratic registrations in Senate Districts 5 and 6 — the overall goal being to seat enough Democrats in the state Senate to push through new tax hikes and big pay and benefit increases for state bureaucrats.<\/p>\n
The mail (and TV) campaign was pretty sleazy, branding Sen. Beers as \u201cin bed with the porno industry\u201d because his campaign treasurer accepted a perfectly legal $5,000 campaign contribution from a legal downtown businessman who runs a legal girlie bar (if Democrats accept union contributions, are they \u201cin bed with the Mob\u201d?) The campaign attacked Sen. Beers for his proposal that specially trained teachers be \u201callowed\u201d to carry handguns on school grounds to protect their students from violent attack. (It\u2019s already legal — the Beers proposal would have required more training.) Democrats even charging Sen. Beers was under investigation by the state Ethics Commission, which turned out to be a lie.<\/p>\n
Those sleaze campaigns succeeded. Sens. Beers and Heck have now been replaced by Senators-elect Allison Copening and Shirley Breeden, who will now presumably vote for the huge tax hikes and state employee wage and benefit hikes for which Democrats yearn.<\/p>\n
Such campaigns cost millions. Where did that money come from?<\/p>\n
A visit to the Web site of the Nevada Secretary of State allows one to bring up (under \u201cgroups\u201d) PDF files of the campaign donation reports filed by the Nevada Democratic Party in June and especially on Oct. 28.<\/p>\n
Ten grand came from the so-called Nevada State Education Association — the teachers union, whose contributions to \u201ceducation\u201d include the high levels of literacy, numeracy, and historical knowledge currently on view among most of our recent local high-school graduates.<\/p>\n
Three hundred dollars came from the Lakes Lutheran Church. Turns out that was just a refund for a caucus gym rental that never happened, since the church fathers didn\u2019t want to appear partisan. No scandal there.<\/p>\n
A whopping quarter of a million dollars came from the \u201cSearchlight Leadership Fund,\u201d which I suspect has something to do with U.S. Sen. Harry Reid.<\/p>\n
$50,000 came from Newmont USA and $25,000 from Barrick Goldstrike Mines — allocations of which I suspect a lot of gold-mining stockholders are unaware, though such moneys are often viewed as \u201cprotection payments\u201d against jacked-up mining taxes, and cheap at the price.<\/p>\n
Nevada Power contributed $30,000 toward the Beers-Heck sleazeball mailer campaign. Glad my power bills are paying for something so directly related to generating and transmitting electricity.<\/p>\n
And $50,000 in Democratic campaign contributions came from five TV stations — KCWY in Wyoming, KRNV in Reno, KTVH in Helena, KVBC in Las Vegas, and KYMA Yuma — all of which are owned and controlled by Nevada University System Chancellor (and TV millionaire) Jim Rogers.<\/p>\n
Rogers is in favor of higher taxes. Mr. Rogers spent his money, and he got results.<\/p>\n
Imagine his chagrin, then, when Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons — a Republican — noted Bob Beers, a Certified Public Accountant by trade, is now available for other duties, and proposed last week that he might appoint Mr. Beers to the state Board of Regents, filling the seat vacated when Regent Steve Sisolak was elected to the Clark County Commission, also on Nov. 4.<\/p>\n
Mr. Rogers works for the state Board of Regents, you understand. They are his bosses. They could presumably, um … fire him.<\/p>\n
The governor is also rumored to be considering the appointment of Bret Whipple — a local attorney who just lost his Board of Regents re-election bid to political neophyte Robert Blakely — to fill another seat on the board, being vacated by Thalia Dondero, who has fallen victim to voter-imposed term limits.<\/p>\n
Mr. Rogers is not fond of Mr. Whipple — who has sometimes criticized the chancellor — either.<\/p>\n
Mr. Blakely, who expressed considerable surprise at his own election over Mr. Whipple after Mr. Blakely racked up total campaign costs of $120, said Monday he would support Mr. Whipple\u2019s appointment to the vacant seat.<\/p>\n
Since Mr. Whipple was just rejected by the voters, his appointment would be \u201ca really bad idea,\u201d Mr. Rogers said Monday. \u201cIt tells the voting public they can go to hell.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although Mr. Whipple is competent and knowledgeable, in this case, Mr. Rogers has a point.<\/p>\n
It was less immediately clear why Mr. Rogers would tell a Review-Journal reporter \u201cI think Bob Beers is a menace\u201d — as he did, on Monday Nov. 10.<\/p>\n
I presumed he was referring to Mr. Beers\u2019 modest fiscal conservatism. (Beers rarely proposes closing down entire state programs — mores’ the pity — generally limiting himself to calls for restraint in their rates of growth.) \u201cI\u2019d like to get in there and help find administrative costs we could save,\u201d Mr. Beers said Monday, when news of the governor\u2019s intentions surfaced. \u201cGet the money back in the classroom where it belongs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Was that it? I called Chancellor Rogers on Wednesday to ask.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you work for a salary?\u201d he asked me, right off.<\/p>\n
When I\u2019m at the Review-Journal, yes I do.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been an entrepreneur for 40 years,\u201d Chancellor Rogers explained. \u201cI\u2019ve never been employed by anybody,\u201d said the man who most Nevada taxpayers probably believed they \u201cemploy\u201d to do their bidding as their university chancellor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know how to cut costs and save money, I know how to borrow money and I know how to make money. So when someone starts talking to me about fiscal conservatism it\u2019s got to be related to the final product you want,\u201d the chancellor said. \u201cI\u2019ve never found anything yet, Vin, that I thought was successful unless you invested money in it. There has to be a balance between expenses and revenue.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem I have with Bob Beers is not that he looks at the expense line; it\u2019s that he\u2019s not qualified to look at the investment line because he\u2019s never done that. … I don\u2019t know that Bob Beers has been financially successful in his entire life. Someone who has never run an operation, I don\u2019t think he\u2019s qualified. Hell, we can cut the expenses to zero if we just shut the whole thing down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goodness. I\u2019m not privy to (outgoing) state Sen. Beers\u2019 tax returns or family budget, but his career in the financial services industry seems to have allowed him to keep up the payments on a nice two-story home in Summerlin, where he and his wife have kept busy raising two children for some years now.<\/p>\n
Mr. Beers doesn\u2019t exactly live in a trailer home. Though — now that I think of it — I\u2019m not sure how living in a trailer home would disqualify one from any public office, including the one in question.<\/p>\n
Meantime, how many of the current board of regents would meet Mr. Rogers\u2019 standard — how many are self-made millionaire entrepreneurs who accept no paychecks but have experience running \u201cbig operations\u201d?<\/p>\n
Chairman Michael Wixom is a lawyer. He does help run his law firm. Maybe he\u2019s OK.<\/p>\n
Vice Chairman Howard Rosenberg is an art professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, which (since Mr. Rogers oversees the president of UNR) makes Regent Rosenberg the boss of his boss\u2019s boss.<\/p>\n
Presumably no experience running a million-dollar business operation, there.<\/p>\n
Regent Mark Alden is another CPA. Regent Stavros Anthony is a police captain. Retiring Regent Thalia Dondero is a former Clark County Commissioner who serves on the board of the Gilcrease Nature Sanctuary. Ron Knecht is an economist.<\/p>\n
Does Mr. Rogers think ANY of his bosses are qualified for their posts? How about newly elected Regent Robert Blakely? Since being laid off at Yucca Mountain, this graduate in mining engineering from Montana Tech has had a number of jobs, and is now a salesman. A nice guy, but not a millionaire entrepreneur who\u2019s run any big \u201coperations,\u201d from all appearances.<\/p>\n
Mr. Rogers does have his own nominees for the two vacant posts, one a local opthalomologist. The fact that this state employee is recommending who two of his bosses should be captures pretty well the current \u201ctail wagging the dog\u201d set-up at the Board of Regents.<\/p>\n
As for that \u201cbalance between expenses and revenue,\u201d that would pretty well describe a private university — a model that turns out some pretty well-educated graduates, in my experience. But the university system that Chancellor Rogers runs for us is a tax-subsidized state system. It hemorrhages cash — requiring those aforementioned tax subsidies — every year. There is no \u201cbalance between expenses and revenue.\u201d Ever.<\/p>\n
Which is why — when we enter a recession and state tax revenues fall — taxpayers expect the state university system to pare back.<\/p>\n
Chancellor Rogers spent $50,000 to help evict Bob Beers from his state Senate seat, I mentioned.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes I did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Is that why he\u2019s upset, I asked — because he spent $50,000 to get rid of this guy, and now Beers could be appointed as Mr. Roger\u2019s new boss?<\/p>\n
\u201cWell that\u2019s very logical, isn\u2019t it?\u201d Chancellor Rogers replied. \u201cDoes that shock you? … This guy has never had a creative thought, has never been successful in anything. He\u2019s just In there voting against everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Things don\u2019t seem to be working out precisely as Mr. Rogers planned, in this case.<\/p>\n
Would that be a case of irony, or poetic justice? I often get the two confused … having gone to a government high school and all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Nevada Democratic Party and its affiliated unions did a great job turning out voters for the Nov. 4 general election, and placing in the hands of many of those voters endorsement sheets \u201crecommending\u201d how they might vote — all the way down the ballot to the supposedly \u201cnon-partisan\u201d elections for judgeships, school board, etc. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[30,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2008-election","category-education"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-28","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}