Las Vegas Gleaner

Yet more evidence (as if any were needed) that low taxes are the key to sustained economic growth and prosperity

Everybody knows that the lower the taxes the better, for the economy. That's just common sense. And since Nevada is one of only seven states without a personal income tax and one of only three that doesn't tax business income or profits, it stands to reason that Nevada boasts the second highest unemployment rate in the nation because ... wait, what?

Candidate bravely puts Grover Norquist's interests ahead of Nevada's

Thursday morning, Republican gubernatorial candidate Joe Heck was scheduled to strip and wrap himself in a Don't Tread on Me® flag, bow before a portrait of Ayn Rand, put his hands over his ears, close his eyes, chant "I vow never to support a tax increase," and then seal the deal by drinking deeply from a puppy skull full of Grover Norquist's urine that is kept for just such occasions under the protection of a Wackenhut security team at Citizen Outreach's Nevada headquarters.

I bumped into Heck while looking in on a madcap menagerie of teabaggers a couple weeks ago, and after ribbing him some -- ostensibly sane man, a physician, no less, pandering to the kooks, etc. -- we were talking about state taxing and spending and long story short I asked him if he had taken the government-hating blood oath, or as its champions like to call it, the anti-tax pledge.

He answered my question, first, by saying no, then by noting that he has already sworn an oath as a doctor, and then adding something about being a man of his word.

Then we had to hush because, if memory serves, the birthers were pledging allegiance to the flag or to Goddy McGod or some damned thing, and the conversation sort of petered out. Anyway I never really gave it much more thought.

But now that Heck has irresponsibly pledged to never raise taxes no matter what, I'll confide that I walked away from our conversation mildly impressed that he had seemed to reference his oath as a physician when asked about the anti-tax pledge so as to suggest that the former was serious and worthy of swearing to, while the latter was not.

And when he said he was a man of his word, I took it -- and I could be totally wrong, s'pose -- to mean that he intended to earn the trust of voters without submitting to puerile stunts foisted on candidates by  ideology-blinded bullies from Washington.

But, eh, what the hell. The important thing is that your Gleaner absolutely could not be more pleased to see that Heck has decided that he must bow down to kiss the pudgy wingnutted feet of Grover Norquist and his Nevada acolyte, Chuck Muth. Currying favor with the GOP's government-hating base could boost the chance, however slight, that Heck can stay in the gubernatorial primary all the way to the end and help split up the GOP vote enough for Jim Gibbons to squeak to victory.

The people who brought us Gibbons may be lining up behind Brian Sandoval (who is also tacking to the right). But as I've said time and again, it would be far, far too convenient for Nevada Republicans and all those campaign contributors who insisted that Gibbons simply had to be governor to now get rid of the disturbing neurotic in a GOP primary. It is only fair and right that they be saddled with their erstwhile favorite all the way through a general election.

So in the spirit of the confused Notre Dame cheerleader (who apparently has become this little website's photographic content du jour, for this week anyway), please join your Gleaner in urging Heck to keep up the good work. 

Go, cynical and irresponsible sycophant, go!

Oh, and an open note to Sandoval: Don't you dare flip-flop and take that anti-tax pledge yourself! Your continued refusal to do so, coupled with the right's attacks on what they like to call the "Guinn-Sandoval tax hike," could keep the primary competitive right down to the wire.

Time to make Kent Conrad an offer he can't refuse?

In fairness, not all Democrats are nodding their heads in sympathy with the paranoid style in American politics, displayed during the healthcare debate this summer by misinformed white people shaking their fists in the air at protests and town hall meetings to the media's delight.

But the Blue Dogs in the House are. And more significantly, so are their conservative Democratic counterparts in the Senate.

And while it's bad enough that Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, Evan Bayh and the rest of the Senate "Democratic Republican" Caucus are caving to irrational teabagger concerns about, sigh, "socialism" and a looming "government takeover" of healthcare, what's even worse is that the rest of the Democrats, including those in the White House, are in turn caving to Baucus and company.

The increasingly likely result: Watered-down legislation that may or may not be better than nothing, depending on the final structure by which low- and middle-income workers will be rendered captive customers, forced to pay more than they can afford to health insurance companies whose first and highest priority is not providing coverage but collecting premiums.

Does it have to be this way?

Um, no? Your Gleaner offers some hopeful suggestions over on the Guardian's website.

Harry Reid channels Jim Gibbons

Known dullard Max Baucus has finally released a summary of his supercalifragilistic health care bill, which among other things (not all of them this bad) would require people to give money to the private health insurance industry (no public option) or get fined.

And Senate majority leader Harry Reid, finally taking an interest in the work of Baucus's Finance Committee, rushed out a statement highly critical of the Baucus bill because ... it would require Nevada to increase spending on Medicaid by more than 5 percent "at a time when the state's budget is suffering."

"During this time of economic crisis, our state cannot afford to shoulder the second highest increase in Medicaid funding," Reid said. "I spoke to the chair of the Finance Committee and he assured me that this bill will be improved for Nevada before he takes it to the committee for final mark-up next week."

Really, Harry? Potentially the most important piece of domestic legislation to come before Congress during your tenure in the Senate leadership if not over the course of your entire congressional career, and that's your big concern?

Asshat.

There are a lot of problems with the bill Baucus is taking to his committee (more later, probably). But one of the better -- and more progressive -- features of the Baucus plan standardizes Medicaid eligibility to cover everyone earning up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level.

Nevada would be required to increase Medicaid spending more than nearly every other state because Nevada spends less than nearly ever other state on Medicaid in the first place. Reid knows that -- his state's notorious cheapness, combined with federal funding levels that are often determined by state spending, is his reelection campaign's first line of defense against GOP arguments that Reid hasn't delivered for Nevada.

Well, at least now Reid is talking to Baucus. Given the innocent bystander approach that Reid has taken to health care reform while Baucus was stupidly -- and wholly unsuccessfully -- wooing Republicans by caving to their demands, Reid couldn't be bothered to get involved. Why, if Max and Kent Conrad want to gut the best opportunity for comprehensive health care reform since maybe ever, gosh, well, it's Max's committee. That's been Reid's approach.

Now Reid is insisting that Baucus change the bill even before it is taken to the Finance Committee for mark-up. That is, Reid suddenly is not only telling Baucus what to do, he's going over the heads of all the rest of the senators on the committee as well.

And all for a picayune and intellectually bankrupt concern that sounds like something Jim Gibbons would say. Indeed, it's shocking that Reid's blast at the Baucus summary was not issued jointly with John Ensign and Dean Heller.

No, no, for the last time no! Nevada has no Ned LaMont.

Yes. That does suck.

Strapping young NV GOP wannabes in the news

• Republican gubernatorial frontrunner and now announced candidate Brian Sandoval, complaining that it might "tie my hands" (but not in a good way), is declining the traditional GOP ritual wherein candidates paint their faces with the blood of kittens, put one hand on their butt and one in front of their eyes and twirl three times, solemnly chanting "I pledge never to raise taxes" with each turn. Or as the teabaggers would -- will -- say, Brian Sandoval is a Muslim socialist who supports a government takeover of health care.
• Eddie Haskell, traces of kitten blood still visible on his forehead, says that unlike other Republicans vying to challenge Harry Reid, he's already lost a statewide race, and that's proof positive that he's got what it takes to lose to Reid in a general election next year. Eddie -- or Danny Tarkanian, as the media insists on calling him -- added that he is perfectly willing to let John Ensign fuck him.

A Democratic senator finally says something to cheer about

Although yet another poll (well, a Rasmussen thing anyway) shows that if the electon were held today Harry Reid would lose to the greasy filth you find on the floor when you move a major appliance, Reid says not to worry, when the time comes, he'll take out the Republicans like they were yesterday's trash. Or words to that effect.

Whatever.

Meantime, in a much more interesting and hopefully far more consequential development, Jay Rockefeller is the first Democratic senator to publicly say that Max Baucus can take his watered-down excuse for a health care reform bill and shove it up his bumpkin ass. Or words to that effect.

Go, great-great grandson of a robber baron, go!

The accolades keep pouring in

Holy roller and fucker of his best friend's wife John Ensign has made the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) 2009 edition of the most corrupt members of Congress.

Being recognized in Washington is nothing new for Ensign. He has won numerous D.C.-area intramural sporting events, is widely regarded as one of the best golfers to win an election in the history of this or any other representative democracy, and was named one of the 50 most beautiful people in Washington in 2006.

The distinction bestowed by CREW, however, may mark the first time that Ensign has been singled out for anything that actually has any substantive connection whatsoever to his duties and responsibilities (or disregard thereof) as a U.S. senator.

Spunky Democrats sternly confront right-wing extremism as only they can

Democrats have responded to Joe "You Lie" Wilson in their customary manner -- adopting a meaningless gesture that only heightens the wingnut's celebrity while rolling over and doing everything they can to address his concerns. And even though Republican Rep. "Darling" Dean Heller dashed your Gleaner's initial hopes by turning out not to be the white person who yelled at the black person for not hating brown people enough, the Nevada career politician's own eagerness to exploit the xenophobia of his constituents is associated with Wilson's fifteen minutes, to the apparent approval of teabaggers everywhere.

So there's a story for that. But if I may I'd like to suggest also watching (or rewatching as the case may be) this short clip from Maher's show last week, because.

Spineless Democrats not the only Americans being cowered into submission by ignorant knuckleheads

And now for some news from the world of entertainment:

Creation, starring Paul Bettany, details Darwin's "struggle between faith and reason" as he wrote On The Origin of Species. It depicts him as a man who loses faith in God following the death of his beloved 10-year-old daughter, Annie.

The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia.

However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.

The story goes on to reference some egregiously absurd churchy nonsense as spewed by stupid, stupid people, if you've an appetite for that sort of thing. But I'm not going to repeat any of it. Dumb Klistian fundies are like Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons -- things that used to amuse me but that I now find mostly tiresome.

I will however take this opportunity to remind everyone that, hard to believe as it may be, this nation has not always been guano crazy about Goddy McGod. In the latter half of the 19th century (dubbed "The Golden Age of Freethought" by Susan Jacoby) non-belief was much more accepted and commonplace than it is today, and freethinker Robert Ingersoll was one of the most sought-after -- and highly-paid -- public speakers in cities and towns the nation over.

Call me an incurable optimist if you want, or a slave to crude Whig notions of history if you must, but your Gleaner tends to think that the world becomes a better place over time, that advances are made in social and economic justice, that within history there is such as thing as progress, mostly. That's what your Gleaner likes to believe, anyway.

But sometimes it's hard.

Senators urged to bravely ignore public sentiment, heed distorted teabagger-driven media coverage instead

From the WaPo/ABC poll, only the latest survey that the media will use to push the conventional wisdom du jour, i.e., that Obama and reform-minded Democrats must scale back their health care proposals if they hope to get a bill:

22. Would you support or oppose having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans? Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat?

 -------- Support --------  
 NET Strongly Somewhat 
 55  33     22 

--------- Oppose --------   
 NET Somewhat Strongly 
  42  11       31 

As Lindsay Graham, Olympia Snowe and (of course) Kent Conrad like to say, the public option absolutely positively must be taken off the table. Because it's so unpopular.