Fulkerson Wrong Again
March 31st, 2008I got back from vacation to find Nevada’s voice of “progressives” had penned an article in a Reno weekly advocating improved quality of life through higher taxes on Nevadans. You can read it here.
He starts out swinging wildly, and missing:
Sales/gaming tax revenue that fuels the budget is cyclical and leads to dramatic swings, from $300 million in surplus a few years ago to today’s shortfall of more than $500 million.
The problem is that he is flat wrong. Income taxes fluctuate far more wildly than transactional-based taxes do. You can see that in the current “budget crises” effecting many states. California, for example, dependent on income taxes, is facing far worse budget shortfalls than Nevada is. Here is a post-mortem by the Council of State Governments - West from the last “budget crises” showing Nevada leading the stability pack in the states surveyed.
Fulkerson’s specific evidence - that Nevada has gone from a $300-million surplus to today’s shortfall of more than $500-million demonstrates his one-handed shoot-from-the-hip style of complaining that renders his arguments to political backwaters. It was an $800-million surplus in 2005, and a $900-million shortfall today, and it has nothing to do with Nevada’s existing tax structure. The ‘05 surplus was caused by Nevada’s legislature raising taxes too quickly, and the ‘08 shortfall was caused by planning to spend too much based on habits we’d established spending two-thirds of the surplus starting new programs and expanding old ones.
Fulkerson stumbles again on his second paragraph:
How long are we as a state going to tolerate being the worst or among the worst in funding education, environmental protection or social issues? Leading the nation in any negative metric of social well being (youth suicide, meth use, homelessness, mentally ill in emergency rooms) carries huge economic costs—not to mention human costs—that must be accounted for. We’re paying much more for jails, prisons and emergency room services—the consequences of our stinginess—when it would be cheaper and more humane simply to fund prevention programs.
Once again, Fulkerson is done in on wild exaggeration and bad facts.
- Education spending, per pupil, ranks 37th of 51 states.
- Environmental spending, per capita, ranks 39th of 51 states.
- Youth death by suicide, accident, homicide we rank 31st.
- Fulkerson suggests it would be cheaper to prevent the need for jails & prisons. No other state (or nation, for that matter) has ever done this. Sure wish Fulkerson and his “intellectuals” would tell us the solution here.
With the foundation for his article in shreds, the rest of it (detailing which of Nevada’s citizens he would tax more in order to expand government, ie, all of them) fails too.
March 31st, 2008 at 7:12 am
Fulkerson, like much of his writing, is nothing more than a dangling participle. What is it with those in the north and their politicians who seemingly only visit southern Nevada to grope our women and pillage our coffers? I think the Carolinas and Dakotas had a great idea.
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March 31st, 2008 at 7:59 am
Fulkerson is a genius. According to Vegas Sun, Ralston and Ms. Taxus, raising taxes solves all problems. If your tooth hurts, then just raise taxes. If your favorite football team has a losing season, then just raise taxes.
Here is the ultimate proof. Every year the state and Federal government takes a bigger bite out of the economic pie and our problems are getting smaller and smaller.
So wake up and get with the program!
April 1st, 2008 at 5:00 pm
It appears as if Fulkerson is in reliance of the age old Liberal mantra, ‘Tell a lie big enough and often enough and soon it will accepted as truth.’
Look at the Presidential campaign. Hillary is doing it and Obama, a quick study is ON THE TRAIN!
April 4th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Hope you had a great vacation, Bob. You missed some excellent comedy emanating from the office of your favorite governor.
Here’s a statistic I’d like to see as part of this discussion—the actual numbers generated by sales and gaming taxes. How much money was coming into the state, say, 8 months ago from those two sources, and how do those figures compare to what’s coming in now? That would seem to be one legitimate way to evaluate how or state got to this point. I’m not being a smart-ass here and do not have the numbers but am betting Sen. Beers has the figures memorized by now.
Also, I’m pretty sure the Big Lie strategy described above by Mr. Gliddon was originally proposed and perfected by Joseph Goebbels. My memory isn’t as good as it used to be, but I’m resonably confident that Minister of propaganda Goebbels was not a liberal.
April 5th, 2008 at 5:13 am
Pardon me while I barf. Let’s call these “progressives” what they are, Marxists and Communists. The only thing more taxes have brought us is more parasites, government employees included sucking off of the taxpayer. When they are spending our money to advertise in Spanish to get more illegal aliens
to sign up for taxpayer funded Nevada Checkup then you know
they have WAY too much money to spend. How about proposing the
School Choice initiave giving $5,000 to every student that wants to go to a private school where they charge an average of $3,500 per year per student?
April 5th, 2008 at 6:12 am
There is just to much government at all levels. How we got here, I don’t know but, one thing is for sure, it will end. Again I don’t know when it will end but I do know it won’t be pretty!
April 5th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
To Knapp: Goebbels and Hillary are both megalomaniacs. They prey on the weak using fear through terrible lies. They back their play with power (Goebbels with military power, Hillary with money). All politicians we follow today do the same thing. I am hard-pressed to find a statesman or patriot in the whole sorry bunch. You simply picked the wrong analogy, in essence proving Gliddon’s point, because “liberal” and “conservative” are the same monster with a different mask. Sorry, Lee, but Obama (or Barry, as he was known to call himself for years) is no different. He just tells a better story.
It matters not where the money comes from, the politicians enslave the citizens more as they tax and spend more. It does not matter on what or where the money comes from (especailly to them), just that they have control. The citizens are responsible to stop it and if they do not: well, just give it a few more years here in America and you will see, just as the French saw when they were told to “eat cake”.
To Helen: Vouchers are a “feel-good” way to convert private schools to Politician-controlled schools. They simply take your money, give it back to you (or someone else), and place the same inane rules on the private schools as they have on their own schools. We have all seen the results of this maneuver. Private schools would be smart not to accept these restrictions, but “free money” seems to be a powerful drug. Most will probably not be able to resist. Those that do will probably be legislated into accepting, just like the “free money” health care. I would hope that we are not that naive….then, again, look who we pick to control us.
Bruce is right. While George Knapp buries his head in the bosoms of the weak-minded, our politicians simply press forward with their money-funded “public service”. Puppets on a string, jumping to the tune of their handlers. You have to start seeing the Georges of the world for what they are…and you will…..one way or another.
April 12th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Interesting group you’ve got here Senator. A couple of responses, and then I will leave the arena as my views do not seem welcome here.
1) I agree that the name time-honored name “George” has taken a beating over the past 7 and a half years. I’m guessing that the above writer does not hold in disdain ALL Georges, esp. George Will and George Harris.
2) Yes, I like bosoms.
3) I did not argue on this site in favor of more spending of any kind. The only point I made is that I hoped to soon see the revenue figures so the public can understand both sides of the equation in analyzing our current fiscal mess. Lo and behold, those numbers have now been made public. The amounts collected from our two primary sources of government moolah are way way down, as we all know.
4) The only point I was making about the Big Lie strategy is that the original poster above was wrong in assigning its origin to liberals. Goebbels wasn’t a liberal. I agree that politicians of many different stripes have used the tactics in the years since the Nazis invented it.
5) Senator, I invite you and your readers to check out the program “Crossfire: Water Power and Politics” which will air Sunday April 20th at 4 pm. This is a harder-hitting version of the show we produced and aired last month. If your readers are really concerned about excessive government spending –and I know they are— they will certainly want to learn more about what will be the largest and most expensive public works projects in Nevada history—the water grab—a proposal that will likely devastate a huge chunk of our rural counties and could cost in excess of $10 billion. As Sen. Beers has noted publicly, there are cheaper and safer ways to achieve the same results but our water officials don’t want to talk about the options.
Yours in Puppet-dom,
GK
April 18th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
[…] to George Knapp over at channel 8, who last week left a comment on the Beers blog reminding everyone about his hour-long special on Nevada water. It airs Sunday afternoon. Set your […]