Jon Ralston notes how lucky pols are that voters don’t pay attention

By Jon Ralston (contact)

Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2007 | 7:23 a.m.

Nevada politicians and special interests are fortunate the voters here are so benighted. That's a kind way of saying they count on them at least being uninformed and, if they are lucky, quite clueless, too.

How else to explain the politics of simplicity that has overtaken the discussion of the state's finances? As Nevada has grown and its problems have become more acute and complex, the discussion seems to have devolved to a most shallow and inane level of discourse.

Start with a governor who actually believes "no new taxes" is a philosophy and whose idea of thoughtful cuts is to take a broadsword (5 percent a year for two years from most state agencies , as if they are all created equal) to the budget only a few months into a two-year cycle.

Add state lawmakers who generally are divided into two camps: Republicans, who prattle on about government fat and illegals consuming state dollars to justify allowing the budget gutting, and Democrats, who wail sotto voce about the effect of the reductions, but won't dare to publicly speak about any way to make up the revenue.

And then you have the interest groups ranging from the tax consumers such as the teachers union, which appeals to the lowest common denominator with its gaming tax increase proposal, to the tax avoiders such as the chamber elite, whose use of the stonewall for decades has been sickeningly spectacular.

And here we are. Our public school and higher ed systems are the envy of no one. Our roads are a clogged mess. Our social safety net is an SCHIP off the old federal block. And the governor, as lawmakers stand by like guilty bystanders, is about to lop off a couple of hundred million from the state budget.

Yes, here we are once again at the proverbial crossroads, where opportunity intersects with adversity and yet the path of least resistance seems the chosen course. The politics of simplicity, uncluttered by deliberation or depth. Luckily, the voters don't get it, or there might be trouble.

Why is there a budget shortfall? Casino winnings and sales tax collections have declined, which has caused a substantial deficit only a fourth of the way into the first year of the budget biennium.

It is the same explanation that caused Govs. Bob Miller and Kenny Guinn to have to make budget cuts - or at least they said they had to, not for policy but for political reasons, just as Gibbons is poised to do.

It's fortunate that the voters don't have the brains to realize that if a budget were not so dependent on gaming and sales taxes and were balanced by, say, a corporate income tax, this would not happen. Indeed, you might even be able to have a real philosophical debate - I feel the shudder now from the elected elite - about how much money government really needs to provide a certain level of services and what should happen (rebate?) if more money were to come in than was needed.

But, thankfully, the pols and the special interests that might benefit or be taxed know the voters don't care, unless they are presented with raising the gaming tax, which is a no-brainer. That is, the politics of simplicity at work.

The issue here for two decades has never been about being fiscally conservative or profligate. No Republican elected official has ever had the fortitude to actually propose hundreds of millions in cuts to the state budget - they just talk a good game. And few Democrats have had the gumption to propose a massive rejiggering of the tax structure to create a revenue stream to satisfy the needs they want to fulfill.

This is about doing it on the cheap , so as Jim Gibbons and his opponent last year, state Sen. Dina Titus, have said we are on the bottom of all the good lists and the top of all the bad lists. Yes, that hackneyed phrase is the epitome of the politics of simplicity - but at least it points to the complicated problem. Thankfully, the voters are too dumb or distracted to really care, so the cycle continues.

Yes, thank goodness the voters are uninvolved cretins. Otherwise, they might rise up and actually demand these folks do their jobs.