If Donald Trump can make Mexico pay for a border wall, we can make the Oakland Raiders solve the state’s $400 million projected budgetary shortfall.
The ghost of Al Davis has played Nevada like a streetcorner hooker, schmoozing, seducing, then stealing the working girl’s purse.
It appears increasingly unlikely that the Raiders will move to Gomorrah South. What self-respecting pirate would trade the sixth-largest TV market for number 40?
So what to do with the enabling legislation? Passed by a sheepish super-majority in an instant special session, it allows Clark County’s hotel room tax to be raised by two percentage points which will generate almost a billion dollars.
Thanks to disgraced Gov. Jim the Dim’s tax initiative, it takes a two-thirds legislative super-majority to raise any tax. However, the 2017 legislature can simply re-direct the Raiders revenues with a simple majority vote because it’s no longer a tax hike.
The money can go toward building and repairing schools and can even lessen demand on the permanent regressive sales tax passed for Washoe schools earlier this month.
Our corrupt (thank you, Mr. President-elect) political leaders have passed out corporate tax freebies like cookies and condoms at an orgy.
All new growth thus burdens us, the great unwashed. Schools are bursting, police and fire services have yet to be restored to pre-recession levels, roads are patched with bubble gum and parks are going back to nature the hard way, speaking of which…
MARGE SILL PARK? At 1:00 p.m. this Friday, Dec. 2, at the Unitarian Universalist Church on Del Monte Lane, Nevada will say goodbye to environmentalist giant Marjorie Sill. A fitting tribute would be to convert the former Garden Shop and ranch house at Mayberry and W. McCarran into Marjorie Sill Park.
Washoe County officialdom tells me it can’t afford acquisition and Reno is technically insolvent. Private money will thus have to keep it from going mondo condo. It’s already surrounded by county parkland so it’s time to mobilize the neighbors, the city and the legislature. The state will have the money.
With all this new infrastructure revenue, we might even name a school on behalf of the Raiders in honor of the late Darryl Stingley.
We must ensure its athletic fields are not carpeted by brain-damaging, lead-laced, carcinogenic crumb-rubber turf. Lawmakers should devote funding to replacing that green plague in parks and athletic fields statewide, including UNR’s Mackay Stadium, speaking of which…
YOU’RE FIRED. None of the news about the axing of UNR football coach Brian Polian has used the word “fire.” It’s been spun as mutual parting, although Polian told the Reno Gazette-Journal before winning the UNLV game last week that “if it happens, I absolutely disagree with it.”
Former Coach Chris Ault is among rumored replacements. Ain’t gonna happen. His abrupt departure after a final-minute bowl loss four years ago signaled his realization that UNR cannot be competitive in a big-bucks pro-ball environment.
Hope you and yours enjoyed enthralling Thanksgibleting. Happy High Holly Days.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Barbano is a 48-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com. E-mail <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us> Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.
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