Last week’s corporate welfare orgy produced at least one beneficial result: The electric car cancer may not spread much further.
Red Chinese hucksters expropriated the name of the great British scientist Michael Faraday (1791-1867) and scammed about a third of a billion from Nevada taxpayers for a Gomorrah South car factory. They should name their vehicles MAOseratis.
One provision signed by Gov. Veto El Obtúsè reportedly prevents gambling and mining companies from scoring the same subsidies.
Apparently some of my carping sank in somewhere. “Can megaresorts scam Tesla-style freebies?” I wrote on Sept. 23, 2014.
I approached Nevada’s best lawmaker, Assembly Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick, D-Las Vegas, who said gamblers cannot score Tesla-style billions because casinos are not included in “the economic development plan.”
I read same. It dated from 2012 and said nothing about who’s in or out. She also said other laws barred gamblers. I reviewed statutes and talked to some very defensive officials who could not document a gambler exemption.
I also asked if gambling megaresorts are exempt, then what about non-gambling megaresorts?
Silence.
I went to Nevada’s most renowned tax expert, now-retired Nevada Taxpayers Association leader Carole Vilardo. She likewise came up dry.
Now that our corporate welfare legislature has enacted restrictions, I feel good about being over a year ahead of the game as usual. But does all this shut out Sheldon Adelson or Steve Wynn, guys who can spend a couple billion and thus qualify at Tesla levels?
Stay tuned.
CIRCULAR FIRING SQUAD. On the local corporate welfare front, the Sparks City Council last week voted 4-0 (Councilmember Charlene Bybee abstaining) to allow just about anybody with a pulse to work as an electrician or plumber.
Sparks City Hall press releases consistently assert that city inspectors ensure construction to the highest international standards. Very pretentious for an outfit that can’t even buy kid-safe Astroturf. (Barbwire Nov. 24.)
I’ve written several times how lack of certification enforcement over many years opened the city to liability. So the council wiped out their regulatory authority while still guaranteeing code compliance. So unqualified workers may be depended upon to perform work at the highest level. So nothing will ever go wrong.
Right?
Otherwise, smart lawyers have one helluvan argument: The city removed qualification standards and yet certified the work as world class. But it wasn’t. So the city is liable for damages.
The circular legal logic made the council a circular firing squad. Postmortems at NevadaLabor.net/
WE DON’T NEED NO EDUCATION. Moonhowlers failed to cut union apprenticeship programs out of the work training provisions of the Faraday law. At least lawmakers value technical education even if the Sparks Council doesn’t.
MX REDUX. Tribune alum Dennis Myers penned a great piece in the current Reno News & Review about the proposed Mexico/Canada freeway, Interstate 11, which will pave over much of rural Nevada. Shades of the MX Missile.
Happy High Holly Days to you and yours.
Be well. Raise hell. Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Barbano is a 47-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com. E-mail <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us> Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.
Leave a Reply