The Review-Journal heartily advocates spending reductions to solve the $887 million budget hole that forced all of you to Carson City for a special session. Why not take them at their word, then, and cut off Sherman Frederick's totally unnecessary nanny-state guvmint handout? It's only worth about $800,000, but that's good for five or six school-district administrators, right?
How? Gosh, it's so easy! Stop requiring the counties to publish the property tax rolls that are already easily available for free on the Internet. Voila! It can even be cast as a "green" initiative, too! In Clark County, that was 576 pages per home subscriber in December and Clark County by law had to pay the Review-Journal $555,000 for the honor. Here's what it looked like:
Now, now, Tom Mitchell and Sherman Frederick. Don't get all dewy-eyed about the unwired and underprivileged now! You sure as hell don't give a damn when they have to take a few extra steps on their own, and I thought you were champions of people's can-do spirit? Anybody can go to the Clark County Public Library and have a librarian help them look it up if they don't have a pooter or can't figure out a website that's a lot easier to navigate than, uh, ReviewJournal.Com!
Not to mention, the Internet version is so much more user-friendly. You can easily pivot to your neighbors' parcels to compare and contrast if you wish! In the dead-tree version, you have to know the names of your neighbors and who the hell knows that anymore?
Last year, the Legislature actually passed a bill to do away with this but the high-minded, libertarian and super-duper ethical Sherman Frederick himself called Gov. Jim Gibbons to plead for the veto that killed it according to a report by Jon Ralston. Y'see, Frederick doesn't believe in government handouts unless it's his.
During that session, Nevada Press Association Executive Director Barry Smith told lawmakers that printing the rolls provides "third-party accountability." Smith, in this instance, is a liar and knows it. The R-J doesn't expend an ounce of journalistic effort fact-checking or reviewing the tax rolls they print. It's advertising and is treated as such.
So there's some $800,000 across the state that can be returned to county coffers and, in turn, could be kept by the state. It's easy. It's completely unnecessary. And how awesome will it be to watch Sherman Frederick betray everything he writes to keep his own welfare check coming in?
5 comments:
I think you're on the wrong side of this one, buddy. $800k may buy a half-dozen school admins. It buys a few more than that government-watchdog journalists at the RJ.
The government is now responsible for making sure journalists stay employed by requiring an unnecessary and wasteful service to be done? Doesn't that sorta go against everything the RJ claims to believe in?
Maybe they can get Nate Tannenbaum to scare the shit out of everyone with an online tutorial for the county assessor website?
Heck at worst put it up to open bid to see what it's worth. At the very least it then moves out of handout territory.
I know you won't put this comment on your blog because you don't want others knowing that you have a chip on your shoulder when it comes to the Review Journal. You really hate the RJ for not hiring you back, don't you? Why don't you disclose this fact when you write about them? That you tried to return to the RJ after you left only they wouldn't hire you. You want to go accusing other journalists of being unethical and yet you don't follow a basic tenet of journalistic ethics, which is to disclose such conflicts. Put the information out so others can decide whether they want to stand behind your criticisms or take them with a grain of salt.
You might actually earn some respect then.
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