"This struggle may be a moral one or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did; it never will." — Frederick Douglass (See below.)
 

Corporate Welfare, Nevada-style

Nevada Corporate Welfare Rogues Gallery

Oakland Rapists: Softshoe fascism on steroids
Nevada adopts an official state religion: The NFL
Also: Bernie Sanders and Trump Jr. blow into Reno
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 10-18-2016 Sparks Tribune

Corporate welfare movie theater comes back to bite Sparks in the ass 19 years later
Workers never got their back pay

Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 10-4-2016 Sparks Tribune

If you give it away, you can't sell it
How the Beehive State bested Nevada by investing in education rather than prostituting to corporations
High-tax Utah has now surpassed Virginia on the Forbes list of most business-friendly states
Tax-the-workers Nevada is at the bottom of the barrel, as usual

By Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 7-12-2012

i'toon:
Fertilizing apples with citizens as mushrooms

Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 7-1-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

Predictions of calamity were not enough to derail Reno’s runaway train trench. Now what?
Reno News & Review / 7-14-2011

Déjà vu all over again
Ledge '11: Cruel & Unusual Punishment
Barbwire by Barbano / Daily Sparks Tribune 11-14-2010


The more things change, the more they stay the same
BARBWIRE, DAILY SPARKS TRIBUNE 7-9-2006

2003

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Meltdown morphs into Supreme Court sport


Neal: no new taxes without meaningful gaming tax hike

Neal key swing vote in senate taxation committee

Hell freezes over on the Ides of May
COP member e-mails make a difference

Neal blasts lawmakers for taking tax deliberations behind closed doors

Messages from the piano player in the cat house —
Exclusive insider report


Barbano vs. the Gambling-Industrial Complex —
Don't Let Casinos Off the Hook

Special to the Las Vegas Review-Journal 2-7-2003

Dudley Do-Right, Joe Neal, chopped liver
and the elephant in the living room

The COP volunteer hall of courage

Silver State COP 1997-2001 Archive

Over the past two decades, the gambling-industrial complex has kept its taxes low, opened large tax loopholes for itself and facilitated major tax and fee increases on everyone else.
Nevada casinos pay the lowest state levies (with the exception of some tribal compacts) in the nation, all of which are fully deductible on federal income tax returns. Our gross gaming tax, frozen since 2003, remains lowest in the world for operations on the Silver State's level.
The Nevada gambling industry also diverts hundreds of millions in public money toward casino promotion. Because of this ongoing casino skim, booming cities like Reno and Las Vegas cannot afford adequate parks, schools, roads, police and fire protection or many other public services.
Because of more than five decades of chronic corporate welfare giveaways extracted by the casino industry, Nevada communities have been pressured to raise local taxes and fees. The 2001 Nevada Legislature processed legislation to force counties to raise property taxes to bail out state government. (Sen. Bill Raggio, R-Reno, threatened the same in 2003.)
Nevada property taxes have been rising faster than the rate of inflation due in large part to communities being forced to deal with growth without the funds to pay for it. The casino tax skim has become toxic.
Regressive sales and use taxes first surpassed gaming tax collections in 1998. Nevada's governor and top gambling executives, echoed by an increasing chorus of news media, have called for a "more stable" tax base. The most often mentioned alternatives involve a universal sales tax on non-gambling businesses. It would re-impose the sales tax on groceries and place first-ever taxes on health care and other services. The gross gaming tax has been taken off the table everywhere but with the public,among whom two of three have consistently favored a gaming tax hike whenever polled over many years.

The Smoking Gun —

Sen. Neal, conservatives & Gov. Dudley Do-Right agree

Guinn-Hunt Administration Study points the finger at low-wage casino industry jobs

These issues are now reaching critical mass. Nevadans are now holding the end of a chain letter. Silver State Casinos Out of Politics (COP) was formed in 1999 to fight for substantive campaign finance reform for voters and candidates, equity for taxpayers and utility ratepayers and justice for casino workers.

Reducing the gambling-industrial complex's stranglehold on Nevada's political structure will not be easy. However, big, fat, rich targets move slowly and are easy to both hit and dodge.

We need volunteers in every Nevada county. Help us build a statewide network of people willing to write, call, fax, lobby and generally raise a ruckus. (See below.)

If you don't, you'll get stuck with the bill the casinos refuse to pay.

Perhaps someday, we can put some sweat equity into buying an election for ourselves just once.

Be well. Raise hell.


Andrew Barbano, COP on the Beat

 

CORPORATE
WELFARE

LEGISLATURE

LETTERS

LINKS

BARBWIRE

 

Casinos
Out of
Politics
(COP)
P.O. Box 10034
Reno, NV 89510
Phone (775) 786-1455


E-Mail
Barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us

We need people to work their lawmakers and communities.

Get involved.

This is important.

*"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing.

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder & lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

"This struggle may be a moral one or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did; it never will....

"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them. "

— Frederick Douglass, speaking in Canandaigua, NY, 3 August 1857

Dudley Do-Right, Nell Fenwick and Snidely Whiplash cartoon characters Copyright © Jay Ward Productions


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Silver State COP 1999-2001 Archive

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