Las Vegas Sun

One thought about a way to save money big time. Just shut down the Clark County School District for a year. They are the most expensive and ineffective public agency in the state.

I pay to send my kid to daycare, so all the moms and dads who use the schools as a babysitter can start paying to care for their kids too.

I am tired of the smug pundits including Jon Ralston and some casino owners talking about a "broad based business tax".

Do these idiots realize now many call center jobs exist in the southeast BECAUSE there is no franchise tax or corporate income tax here? The call centers can pack up and move 1000 jobs in a few months, if it appears that their cost of doing business here is going up more than they want.

That's exactly what Client Logic did here, when their unemployment tax went too high. They bought another company, changed their name to Sitel, and moved 500 jobs to New Mexico. Did any of these pundits write about the loss of the Client Logic jobs? No.

When you're 25 years old, with only a high school diploma, and can't get a job at a casino because the Mexicans have a lock on the $10 to $13 per hour jobs there, all you can do to pay the rent, and feed your kid is work at a call center.

But of course, the assh*les and idiots who make and influence policy in this state do not have a clue about the potential job losses a broad based business tax would cost.

Ever heard of zappos.com? EIGHTY MILLION GROSS INCOME projected this year, out of one call center. They moved here because there is no income or franchise tax. They can move again just as easily.

By the way, "Tax Free Texas" just adopted a huge franchise tax on the GROSS income of all Texas businesses GROSSING more than $500,000. Every company that can feasibly move out of Texas is talking about doing so. The Texas Legislature has met 3 times, trying to amend the law to staunch the job outflow, but companies understand one thing: Once a state sets up a bureaucracy to collect taxes, when the state wants even more taxes they already have the people and computers in place to collect it.

Does anyone remember No Income Tax New Jersey? Its now the highest taxed state in the USA.

So Jon Ralston, before you or MGM Mirage or the opinion makers and legislators say Nevada should adopt a broad based business tax, why don't you come down to south east Las Vegas and Henderson and talk to us about where you are going to find the call center workers new jobs. Maybe you can convince the casinos to get rid of the people with phony Green Cards and arrange direct job transfers for all of the call center workers.

I am tired of the pundits including Jon Ralston and some casino owners talking about a "broad based business tax".

Do these idiots realize now many call center jobs exist in the southeast BECAUSE there is no franchise tax or corporate income tax here? The call centers can pack up and move 1000 jobs in a few months, if it appears that their cost of doing business here is going up more than they want.

That's exactly what Client Logic did here, when their unemployment tax went too high. They bought another company, changed their name to Sitel, and moved 500 jobs to New Mexico. Did any of these pundits write about the loss of the Client Logic jobs? No.

When you're 25 years old, with only a high school diploma, and can't get a job at a casino because the Mexicans have a lock on the $10 to $13 per hour jobs there, all you can do to pay the rent, and feed your kid is work at a call center.

But of course, the assh*les and idiots who make and influence policy in this state do not have a clue about the potential job losses a broad based business tax would cost.

Ever heard of zappos.com? EIGHTY MILLION GROSS INCOME projected this year, out of one call center. They moved here because there is no income or franchise tax. They can move again just as easily.

By the way, "Tax Free Texas" just adopted a huge franchise tax on the GROSS income of all Texas businesses GROSSING more than $500,000. Every company that can feasibly move out of Texas is talking about doing so. The Texas Legislature has met 3 times, trying to amend the law to staunch the job outflow, but companies understand one thing: Once a state sets up a bureaucracy to collect taxes, when the state wants even more taxes they already have the people and computers in place to collect it.

Does anyone remember No Income Tax New Jersey? Its now the highest taxed state in the USA.

So Jon Ralston, before you or the opinion makers and legislators say Nevada should adopt a broad based business tax, why don't you come down to south east Las Vegas and Henderson and talk to us about where you are going to find the call center workers new jobs. Maybe you can convince the casinos to get rid of the people with phony Green Cards and arrange direct job transfers for all of the call center workers.

It didn't take long for the CCSD spin machine to gin up some numbers for this Las Vegas Sun story, and then sucker Emily Richmond into believing them.

The 2006-2007 figures in the chart published in today's Sun are a crock. Why? Because Nevada law requires that minors be regularly enrolled in and attend school until they are 18 years old. As a result, students are not allowed to quit school to work full time.

The more accurate summary of why CCSD has a more than 50% high school drop out rate is illustrated in the 2005-2006 statistics.

The 2005-2006 statistics show that 23.7% of the students failed to pass the state-required proficiency exam and as a result, they were not given diplomas. The statistics on the 2005 -2006 chart also show that an additional 21.7% were "credit deficient". That means, in plain English, the students could not pass the courses which the CCSD requires for a student to graduate. Had research been done at that time, it's likely the vast majority of the "credit deficient" students did not pass the required math courses.

Which takes us back to last week's stories. The CCSD's elementary school students have not been sufficiently instructed in math in order to handle junior high math, and pass an internal district test math prepared by a Dr. Hanlon.

The CCSD's junior high students have not been sufficiently instructed in math in order to handle first year high school math or the internal district math test prepared by Dr. Hanlon.

Bottom line, the CCSD's schools are incapable of teaching mathematics in a way which will allow the 40 to 50% of high school students who do not get diplomas to pass both the "State Math Proficiency Exam" and the District's "Algebra I" course.

This new spin and b*llsh*t coming from CCSD headquarters, blaming a bad economony for the district's astronomical failure to graduate rate, are being developed in an effort to convince voters to vote for a massive new tax to build more schools.

The CCSD in a nutshell: Exhausted or indifferent teachers, shell shocked and self-important school level administrators, and back stabbing self aggrandizing district level officials.

Vote No on the upcoming school bond.

Tell your legislators to go ahead and cut 14%-22% out of the CCSD's budget when the Legislature next meets, because, when looking at the end product of the CCSD's educational system, it has a failure rate in excess of 50%. Throwing lots of money at a problem obviously has not fixed it.

These kids don't "drop out". The district fails them, and the kids simply do not get a high school degree.

It sounds like Floyd Hale is doing a reasonably good job trying to protect the victims from harassment by the malpractice defense attorneys, who are in my personal opinion the scum of the earth.

However, I have a practical suggestion for members of the public to express their disgust with Dr. Desai & Co. Let's out all the malpractice defense attorneys by making their names as prominent as Dr. Desai.

So here's the first lower than a snake defense attorney "Daniel Curriden". Shun the guy at church and in his neighborhood. Don't let your kids play with his kids. Kick his wife out of the junior league. Lose his reservations when he goes out to dinner. Make Curriden and each of the other malpractice defense attorneys as famous as Glen Lerner.

It's not Dr. Desai & Co. who are going to emotionally brutalize the victims. It's Daniel Curriden and his ilk.

I'm sure that no one, except me, sees the importance of the map next to the article about Councilman Ross. I'm a "Tree Person", from well before it was fashionable to be an environmentalist.

I had the good fortune of growing up in a city planned by Olmstead, the earliest and foremost city planner of the 1800's. Olmstead is also responsible for much of the design of Washington DC. In all cases, Olmstead was wise enough to see that ample tree cover was essential to reducing the heat of the growing urban metropolis even then.

All of the City of Las Vegas, City of North Las Vegas and Clark County need to pay far more attention to the planting and watering of street trees, to the design of sidewalks and spaces between them and the curb which will allow the trees to grow, and to the planting of street trees which will maximize their contribution to "air scrubbing" which so so essential to preserving and improving the valley's air quality.

We all like to say that Las Vegas is better than the San Fernando Valley...but it's not. View the San Fernando Valley from any freeway and you'll see miles and miles of trees, which clean that valley's air.

The ridiculously small economic contribution of the public agencies to understanding the importance of street trees, as well as the planning decision makers' indifference about requiring the planting of street trees, condemn the Las Vegas Valley to worsening air quality.

Home builders like American West, who as a matter of policy refuse to plant street trees are a major part of the problem.

Home builders like Pardee, who sometimes plant street trees, are equally to be condemned because they do not care about their subcontractor Raybum Landscape's failure to plant street trees in a good and workmanlike manner which would be followed by a certified nurseryman.

But for our winds, Las Vegas would already be an air polluted sh*thole like Beijing, because of the masses of people gathered here, with no tree cover to soak up the air polution created by our human activities.

When LAX at the Luxor opened, not too long ago, there were plenty of news stories about the multi-million dollar cost of renovations to create the club space, and to furnish and equip it.

It would be interesting to know who paid for those costs. The partnership which operates the club? The casino as landlord? Or did they split the costs?

If it was not the casino paying the costs of constructing and furnishing the new club, then where did the money come from? Investors? Loans? Skim?

Self important Bill Hanlon says:

“They were taking the entire first nine weeks and doing basic math facts so that kids could pass the proficiency test,” Hanlon said. “That was a bad decision made in good faith.”

What needs to happen, Hanlon said, is for students to be taught the expected material in elementary school before advancing to middle school, and for the same thing to happen before they move on to high school.

“If everyone does the job they are hired to do, we would be in much better shape,” Hanlon said. “When the 10th grader can’t do his work because he didn’t learn what he needed to know by seventh grade and way back in fourth grade, that’s a system designed to fail. And that’s just what happened here.”

What an unfocused, myopic, useless jerk! What, exactly, are the THOUSANDS of high school and junior high school students in the CCSD NOW supposed to do? Not get a high school diploma because of inadequate mathematics teaching at the elementary school level?

The math teachers and math faculties at the high schools who are teaching "the basics" to help high school students pass the Mathematics Proficiency Examination are doing the right thing.

I have two suggestions for Superintendant Rulffes: (1) Transfer Mr. Hanlon to an elementary school position tutoring students in basic mathematics and (2) Require every teacher, dean, assistant principal and principal in the CCSD, at every grade level and every subject, to pass the Mathematics Proficiency Examination on the first try, or lose their job.

As to the later suggestion, if it were implemented I think it would result in the majority of the faculty at the majority of CCSD schools to disappear!

"Finally found a [nickname] for the governor":

Jimbo the Bimbo

As in dumb as a...

Sorry ladies. You're smarter than he is.

The only politician in town, who had the chutzpah to shut down the first clinic and immediately denounce the clinic owners, was Oscar Goodman....the mob's finest lawyer during the 1970's.

People like to say that in the old days, the Mob had a code. You don't hurt "civilians": Old people, ladies, kids and guys who are not causing trouble. The Mob did not like "slimy foreigners" or Anglo weasels.

Drs. Dipak Desai, Eladio Carrera, Vishvinder Sharma, Clifford Carrol, and the 10 other Endoscopy Center doctors, as well as Daniel McBride and the two other clowns on the Board of Medical Examiners, are not "Stand up guys". All of them fall far below the Mob's code of social conduct among civilians.

Somehow, I feel that if this many people had been hurt and ripped off back in the 1960's and 1970's, by today there would have been more progress in righting the wrongs committed. At least 14 gastroenterologists would be sitting in jail receiving the jailhouse version of a colonoscopy.

And who is the first guy, today, who is going to do what the populace wants, subpoena the four owners of the Shadow Lane clinic to testify in public under oath? Oscar Goodman.

I know the 4 doctors will take the 5th Amendment. However, maybe if they don't show up Oscar will figure out a way to have them put in jail for contempt of the subpoenas.

Go Oscar. The ghosts of old Vegas are watching you and smiling!