The Assembled Wisdom’s Annual Year End Posture Parade

It’s getting down to the end of the Nevada Assembled Wisdom, the Republicans aren’t budging from their support of the Governor’s slash-job budget, and the Democrats are giving things back.  Republicans are saying as long as the Democrats keep giving up funding for state services, “we’ll keep listening.”  [Nevada Appeal] Not actually “doing” anything mind you, just staying in the room until the Democrats give everything back?  Nor is it hard to imagine that this article could have been written a couple of months ago and the draft hauled out to insert some quotations.

Nevada Republicans have mastered the art of the perpetual campaign.  Governance requires some negotiation.  Campaigning assumes posturing.  Postures are important.  Postures are evidently more important than funding the Desert Research Institute, more important than keeping our museums open for tourists, more important than funding K-12 education such that teachers and aides aren’t laid off.  Postures allow the candidate to return to the hustings with prideful announcements like, “I voted against new taxes.”

No candidate is going to mount the dais and proclaim — “I helped gut the DRI budget for earthquake monitoring and research.”  At least this doesn’t seem to be a particularly good opener for an address in Wells.  No candidate is going to grab a microphone and say, “I voted for a budget which meant that about 1,800 employees of the Clark County School District were laid off.”   No candidate in Washoe County would lead remarks with “I voted to make the University of Nevada a prime target for other universities and colleges around the country to pick off the best faculty members and researchers.”

Imagine a candidate proclaiming “I did my job in the state legislature, I made it more difficult for Nevadans in rural areas to find health care services, and I wanted to make it even more difficult for them to find mental health care.”   Or, “You should return me to my desk in Carson City because I fought for a budget that made the lines longer at the DMV, and that required local governments to tighten their belts such that the people in County Clerk’s offices had to be furloughed periodically no matter how much work needed to be done for the District Court.”

However, that won’t be what the next campaign season will be about.  Beware the candidate who tells his constituents, “I went to Carson and made tough choices.”  The perpetual campaigners did no such thing.

A tough choice would have been to face the Powers That Be In The Hallways and to have said — we need more revenue.  We need mining companies which report gaudy earnings to their stockholders and minimal income to the state, to pay their fair share.  We need big box retailers who have been squeezing local independent small businesses for years to pony up.  Those decisions would have been “hard.”  It’s far easier to say “yes” to the Powers That Be In The Hallways than it is to fight for unknown families who need the local community college funded because they can’t afford to send a child to a university.

It’s easy to chant “No New Taxes,” it’s harder to explain to parents why their first grader is in a classroom with 35 others.   It’s easy to recite “No New Taxes,” but harder to explain why a person had to sit and wait for someone to be available to process a commercial driver’s license.   It’s easy to intone “No New Taxes,” but rather more difficult to explain why the local library has cut back on its after school reading programs for children.  How easy it is to chant “No New Taxes” but how difficult to provide a rationale for pot-holes, disintegrating pavement, and unplowed winter roads.   Easy is saying “I voted against new taxes,” hard is saying “Sorry, but the state park near you is going to have to close down for a while…find something else to do with your family.”

And, it’s easy to piously proclaim one’s love and affection for “first responders,” those heroes in uniform who protect our lives and property — it’s harder to explain why those self-same individuals should give back wages and benefits when the “sacrifices” come at the expense of one side of the coin and the benefits accrue to the other.  It’s the same old Something-For-Nothing sloganeering — the perpetual campaigners love those first responders, but not quite enough to require that those who depend upon their services provide an appropriate wage, decent health care, and reliable retirement benefits.

Perhaps next round someone will help the population translate the No New Taxes mantra.  Yes, we can have no new taxes — but what that really means is No New Classrooms, No New Road Maintenance, No New Park Services, No New Museums, No New Research Facilities, No New Public Health Services, No New Monitoring of Out-patient Clinics, No New Police and Fire services, No New Rural Clinics, No New Forestry Camps, No New…Anything.  And, there’s even a good chance that not only will nothing be New — we’ll have trouble even keeping what we already have.

Every Republican member of the Assembled Wisdom (another h/t to Mark Twain) in the next campaign season (beginning perhaps tomorrow morning?) should be made to explain exactly what he or she voted AGAINST by maintaining that rigid No New Taxes posture.  The time has long since passed in which the Something For Nothing Crowd should be able to get away with the pious recitation of their favorite slogan.   Should a candidate wish to enter the lists proclaiming fealty to the Powers That Be In The Hallways, eager to tell the electorate there will be No New Taxes — then it’s up to the opposition to inform the voters what that expression really means.   The Powers will be more powerful, and the people will have to do without all that which The Powers don’t wish to pay for, or to dig deeper into their own pockets to pay for that which The Powers want.

Perpetual campaigns can work both ways.