Everything starts with mining!

During the Legislature, some of us had a concern, well-founded, as it turned out, that Harry Reid would help scuttle any effort to make mining start paying taxes.

So as soon as there was some talk about taking the mining tax issue directly to voters, it was accompanied by the fear that Reid wouldn't let that happen, either. And as David Schwartz in the Sun reports, that's pretty much how it's going down.

As Gleaner readers know, I have worked with the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada on mining tax issues. And as Gleaner readers can probably guess, I was not among those who wanted to keep the mining tax off the 2010 ballot so as to protect Reid.

It's not that I care so much about mining taxes that I didn't care if the issue would harm Reid. But while I would obviously prefer to have a Democratic senator than a Republican senator, I just don't find Reid or his reelection as compelling as the rest of the Nevada Democratic and progressive infrastructure does. Besides, if he wins, his victory will be attributable to fundamentals (economic progress, for instance) coupled with the effectiveness of his campaign's televised destruction of his opponent's conduct and character. Mining taxes is small potatoes.

I couldn't understand why the senator would be opposed to having a mining tax on the ballot in the first place. After all, he could come out against it, and thus curry favor with the bumpkin voters whose towns will look like Rhyolite (pictured) one day and, more importantly, whose support Reid clearly values more highly than that of the progressives he knows he can take for granted.

But assuming that Reid has in fact directed the state's labor, environmental and progressive organizations to keep mining taxes off the 2010 ballot -- and I still wonder if that's what Reid wants or if those organizations are just doing what they think he wants -- there are at least a couple explanations.

The first is the obvious one: Reid, who has been spending oodles of dollars to tell everyone with a television that he was raised a ragamuffin in the hot-waterless filthy squalor of a mining shack, actually believes that the transnational conglomerates deserve every penny of the record profits they've been earning from record gold prices. The senator has concluded that mining is already paying its fair share, and should not be forced to pay any more in Nevada than the industry's current effective state tax rate of approximately seven-tenths of one percent. Plus, as the Reid collective has earlier suggested, if Nevada voters did something that Nevada elected officials and sycophantic political insiders would never, ever do -- stand up to the mining industry -- it could complicate Reid's career-long commitment to coddling the mining industry in Congress.

A second explanation (not mutually exclusive to the first) is that Reid and the industry have an agreement by which if Reid protects the industry from voters, the industry will return the favor. Idle speculation? Yes! But idle speculation that might be borne out sometime next year when Newmont and Barrick pay to light up Nevada TV screens with ads explaining how no one in the history of Nevada has ever been a more strong and steadfast apologist for, er, friend of the mining industry than Harry Reid.

It's not that Reid can win the bumpkin vote. That will never happen. But if mining can convince the rubes that the only way to continue the sweetheart deal -- wherein gold conglomerates are burdened with neither federal royalties nor rigorous environmental regulations -- is to reelect Reid (which is probably true), at least some rurals might be persuaded to put what they've been duped into believing is their best interest ahead of the marching orders they got from Glenn, hold their noses and vote for the icky old Democrat, thus minimizing the electoral damage in the sticks and improving the likelihood that Reid will be reelected.

Then he can go back to Washington and resume being the best senator the gambling, growth and mining industries ever had, yippee.

Comments

[dave404]

Gleaner,

Taking your premise that the 5 mining counties are in play, and thus mining tax is taboo, let us look at some numbers.

Taking the Nevada Mining Association at their word as to the five Nevada counties most involved in mining, we find (according to Nevada SOS database, November 2009), that Elko (+4k R), Eureka (+400R), Humboldt (+1,500R), Lander (+800R) and White Pine (+200R), are the mining counties of Nevada. We now know that they are also R leaning counties. Thus, Reid is down 6,900 votes in mining counties as of November 2009 active voter registration numbers.

In the 1998 Reid V. Ensign squeaker, Reid didn't win a single mining county and won the state wide race by 401 votes.

In the 2004 Reid V. Ziser blow out, Reid carried mining counties Humboldt and White Pine. As of November 2009 active R voters out number D active voters in Humboldt by 1,500 and in White Pine by 200. Reid starts down by 1,700 active voters.

In both 1998 and 2004 Mineral County broke for Reid (Mineral has 350 more D than R active voter registration, SOS, November 2009).

As of November 2009 Clark County leans more D than R by 130,000 active voters.

My conclusion? Reid's reelection lies with active Democratic Clark County voters, where the Ds enjoy a 130,000 plurality.

Clark County pays the freight for most of rural Nevada, and thus a poll of what CC Democratic voters want is what Reid should want: "Rubes" only matter if Reid machine doesn't GOTV in Clark.

So, did Reid split the baby and kill a Constitutional amendment while allowing a statutory initiative? Seems like he did.

[Dan]

Serious question: How is mining companies taxed- by how much they take out or by the value of how much they take out? If they are taxed by the value, then shouldn't the amount paid by gold mining companies go up?