Help wanted: corporate lobbyists. No experience necessary. Just follow the simple rules below and you’ll get rich and infamous.
- NEVER, EVER LET THE CITIZENS VOTE on your corporate welfare proposal.
They might show some sense and turn you down. Play politics instead.
- IF THEY INSIST ON DEMOCRACY, GIVE THEM NO CHOICE EXCEPT WHAT YOU WANT.
To move to Las Vegas, all the Oakland A’s need do is look at Sparks-Reno follytix.
Taxpayers were given no choice but raising regressive sales taxes to save the mass transit system and to build new schools to accommodate population growth.
A higher sales tax means nothing to somebody making six figures. To some poor lout trying to support a family, well, just take a third job.
- SEND IN CELEBRITIES to pimp for your project. Movie stars Jeremy Renner and Mark Wahlburg visited Carson City this year pimping corporate welfare for movie companies. All tennis millionaire Andre Agassi had to do was show up at the ledge to get big bucks for his elite private school while public education remained starved for resources.
- UNDERSTAND THE SUCKERS. Most officeholders are average folks from humble roots. Wear expensive suits. Fly in on the corporate jet.
Nevadans always think somebody from out of town knows more than they do.
- GREASE THE SKIDS. Also known as campaign contributions. All elected officials are pro-education save when it benefits their benefactors.
The gambling industrial complex has always been death on increasing the tourist-targeted hotel room tax, except when they can score off it. When teachers asked for a tiny bit of the Las Vegas Raiders room tax hike for education, the casino overlords swatted it down.
- BUY OFF POTENTIAL CRITICS. Jobs-jobs-jobs has always worked for our “extractive” industries, aka mining and gambling.
Tesla promised lots of union jobs for their Storey County battery plant. Elon Musk and Gov. Veto Sandoval made sure it was not put in writing.
When Sandoval starting hustling a similar project for Gomorrah South, unions showed up with a huge banner saying “Fix Tesla First.”
They didn’t, the Las Vegas hustle passed but went belly up.
- SELL THE SIZZLE. Make people think they can have their steak and eat it, too.
Sporting goods giants Cabela’s and Scheels took advantage of a dumbass law called Sales Tax Anticipation Revenue Bonds. Governments get low interest rates and taxpayers are on the hook if the welfare recipient goes belly up.
STAR bonds are paid for by projected sales taxes from the corporate welfare recipients and sold by local governments to pay for the construction of new stores. All retailers need do is show that more than half of their customers would come from out of market.
Just hire some fancy economist to come up with an academic-looking projection that your store will attract tourists (making gamblers support your proposal).
Sparks was embarrassed that the first outfit to use STAR bonds at the Marina was Target, which closed its Prater Way store to build in the Marina district near Scheels. Target, a tourist attraction? Well, their paperwork said so.
- LOSE YOUR CONSCIENCE. Controlling the process means controlling the information flow. The current octopus known as Renown Health stole our county hospital in 1985 by creating a phony crisis.
“Health care costs for poor people will bankrupt Washoe County unless you privatize the county hospital.”
OMG!
“So let us take that white elephant off your hands before the place starts running in the red.” (It never had).
The Nevada State Medical Association stole that gimmick 20 years ago with a media campaign screaming that doctors were leaving Nevada because of high malpractice insurance costs because of all those nasty trial lawyers suing on behalf of crippled patients.
TV spots saturated the airwaves showing a lineup of white coats on both sides of a desert highway walking toward the distance. It wasn’t true, but there was little opposition. The trial lawyers lobby was caught flat-footed.
“Keep our doctors in Nevada” passed, limiting how much wronged patients could collect. The shuck worked and today, unless you are mega-rich, you can’t get a lawyer to sue if you’ve been sliced and diced. The costs of the bringing the case will exceed any potential judgment.
That’s why TV lawyers chase car accidents.
The medical lobby has replayed the same shuck this year when the lawyers are trying to raise the damages cap to bring some semblance of accountability for medical mistakes or incompetence.
- MANUFACTURE A MEDIA IMAGE OF BENEVOLENCE. There are plenty of public relations suede-shoes who can soften up the marks to support their own rape and pillage.
There be plenty of starving charities, matey. Throw throw them a bone and they will praise you before the TV cameras. Aaargh.
- FAKE SINCERITY. Be humble, self-effacing, aw-shucksy.
“Gee, people here are being so nice I almost don’t want to take their money.”
EEE-YO-LEVEN! TAX SOMEBODY ELSE. Taxing tourists is always an easy sell. That’s how the Las Vegas Raiders got their Gomorrah South mansion.
The gambling industrial complex has always been death on increasing the tourist-targeted hotel room tax, except when they can score off it. When teachers asked for a tiny bit of the Raiders room tax hike for education, the casino overlords swatted it down.
Let ‘em eat cake. Or Top Ramen.
SOMETIMES, THERE’S PAYBACK. The City of Oakland was hoist on its own petard. To pay Al Davis to bring the Raiders back from Los Angeles, they remodeled the Oakland Coliseum for football,making it unfit for baseball.
A’s ownership has used that as a reason to move elsewhere, just like the 1989 Charlie Sheen/Tom Berenger/Wesley Snipes movie “Major League” where ownership fields a losing team to facilitate a move.
Life imitates art.
Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for those cruelly afflicted by the cruelly small minds on this small planet.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Quarantino Barbáno is a 54-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com/ Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us
Leave a Reply