Sun Runs Beers Obit
April 22nd, 2007Well, my political obituary anyway. The “former high-ranking Republican government official” is clearly ex-Governor Guinn.
You can tell some of the folks over at the Sun aren’t fond of me by how often they put words in my mouth.
For example:
After his four bills trying to reduce a tax died in committee this legislative session - in part because of decreased revenue predicted by state number crunchers - Beers blamed his colleagues .
Later in the article, the actual quote this “analysis” is drawn from is reprinted - and it turns out neither “my colleagues” nor “some legislators” are my explanation for the bills not being processed. Rather, I state the institution of “The Legislature” is opposed to tax reductions.
My favorite is rehashing the infamous 2003 email in which I posit a theory (in a private email with a former officer of the League of Women Voters, who had misrepresented herself as my constituent) that people who do not value education are behind Nevada’s too-high rankings of states for frequency of poor individual lifestyle choices (rather than too little government, as my correspondent was arguing).
I further theorized that Nevada might have a higher percentage of people who do not value education since such people might be attracted here in hopes of finding a high paying job that does not require much education.
Once my correspondent forwarded our email to government profiteers and those who shill for them, they twisted those theories into an accusation that I believed all casino employees do not value education and behave badly, which, having grown up in Nevada and being personally acquainted with a couple of hundred casino employees, is patently false. But it made excellent headlines at a time when I was blocking the profiteers’ tax hikes.
The profiteers and their shills still bring this episode up, as they did in my political obituary today. Generally, the barb takes this form, and today’s story is no exception:
Beers says bad things about casino employees. “Such people,” he said, “are bad.”
The key here is who I was referring to when I wrote “such people.” In original context, my subject is quite obviously people who don’t value education. That’s why you never see the quote in its original context, with the subject of the statement defined.
Note that in today’s Sun, an editor slipped and failed to cut off my quote before the end, where I conclude by again noting the personal charactaristic being discussed is not where a person works, but if a person values education. Oops!