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January
12, 2006
Vol. 2, No.
1
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Also in
this issue:
Live entertainment tax
a rollercoaster
Former Enron CEOs
get their day in court
Rio
using radio tags
on cocktail servers
Anti-Wal-Mart unions
snipe at each other
Vegas market ripe
for real estate fraud
Indian Taker
Commentary:
Schwarzenegger's credibility at risk as he
repositions his image
The bureaucrat in your shower
Dollar gets New Year mark down
Property rights protection
drive bogs down |
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Common Arguments against
TASC
By Dennis Schiffel
NPRI
Policy Fellow
In a
recent Sunday edition of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal, columnist Geoff Schumacher
used a number of commonly cited arguments
against the Tax and Spending Control initiative
of State Senator Beers. Let’s review a few of
them.
The op-ed asserts the “...initiative violates
the spirit of American governance. We are a
republic, which means we elect representatives
to make governmental decisions on our behalf.”
This argument is fallacious on its face. All
democratic governments impose restrictions on
their elected officials. That is the...
[continued]
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California
Schwarzenegger's credibility at risk as he
repositions his image
By Dan Walters
Sacramento Bee
The
Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger's
1984 sci-fi thriller about a cyborg assassin who
traveled back in time to kill a young woman, was
an enormous hit -- so much so, that the
bodybuilder-turned-actor and movie executives
wanted a sequel. That ambition, however, faced a
problem.
Schwarzenegger's homicidal character had been
obliterated in the first film. Their solution
was to repackage the same character as a good
guy cyborg sent to Earth to protect the young
woman's son - a plot that was basically repeated
in "Terminator III," released as Schwarzenegger
launched his run for governor. Same character,
different situational positioning - more or less
what Schwarzenegger is now trying to do with a
third version of his governorship ...
[continued]
Officiousness
The bureaucrat
in your shower
By Jeffrey Tucker
Ludwig von
Mises Institute
The Department of Energy may soon be paying a visit to a
certain shower-head manufacturer in Arizona. The
company is Zoe Industries Manufacturing. It runs
Showerbuddy.com, a popular site that sells
amazing equipment for bathrooms.
Consumers love the company but one man doesn't.
He is Al Deitemann, head of conservation for the
Seattle Water Board.
[continued]
Crunch time
Dollar gets New Year mark-down
By
Peter Schiff
Euro
Pacific Capital
If the first
trading week of the new year is a sign of things
to come, 2006 may finally reunite Americans with
economic reality. Behind a smoke screen of
optimistic market forecasts, upbeat predictions
of continued prosperity, and rising stock
prices, lies an economy teetering on the brink
of disaster.
Currency traders decided to ring in 2006 by
selling those dollars foolishly accumulated in
2005. In the first week of the year the dollar
lost about 3% of its value verses other
currencies. However, against gold, the ultimate
barometer of purchasing power, the dollar lost
over 4% of its value. Even worse, in terms of a
barrel of crude oil, the dollar lost more then
5% of its value.
[continued]
Pension crisis
Property rights protection gets bogged down
by Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D.
The Heritage Foundation
On June 23rd, the U.S. Supreme Court sent
shock waves through the ranks of the nation’s
homeowners and small businesses when it ruled 5
to 4 that government could seize property and
transfer it to another private owner if the
change in ownership might enhance the community
through “economic development.” The case pitted
the City of New London, Connecticut, against
Susette Kelo, who fought the city for seven
years to keep her home from being seized to make
room for a major commercial development.
Because the decision alerted families across the
nation that their homes are threatened,
widespread alarm and opposition quickly spread.
[continued]
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WHY
BusinessNevada
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Takings
That red laser dot
on your forehead ...
Nevada's tax-hungry left is
again targeting business
By Steven Miller
BusinessNevada
Looking in the mirror
lately, Nevada gaming companies are again catching sight
of red laser dots dancing across their foreheads. At the
other end of the sniper scope this time is a known
eccentric, one Tony Dane. His brilliant idea? Take
gamers’ revenue and give it to somebody else.
While Dane calls himself a Republican, his scheme is
mere wealth-redistribution socialism. And though his
antics are ham-handed, he’s actually stumbled onto the
master plan of Nevada’s Left. Namely, pick some
politically vulnerable business, concentrate your
forces, and then pick their bones. Notably, the Left is
again whining about the plight of its always-failing
socialized education and socialized health care
sectors—and starting to finger its carving knives.
[continued]
Taxes
Live entertainment tax a rollercoaster
By Arnold M. Knightly
LV Business
Press
How well, or poorly, the state's embattled live entertainment tax is performing depends
on which state agency is collecting the tax. The tax is
collected separately by the State Gaming Control Board
and Nevada Department of Taxation, depending on whether
the entertainment is in or out of a casino.
[continued]
Judgment Day
Former Enron CEOs
get their day in court
By Peter Elkind and Bethany McLean
Fortune Magazine
They stand together
against the world: the poster boys of corporate
malfeasance, the yin-and-yang former CEOs of Enron
finally coming to trial in a drab federal courtroom in
downtown Houston.
But in truth, Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling never much cared
for one another. The charming Lay wasn't comfortable
with Skilling's sharp edges; the brainy Skilling
considered Lay a lightweight glad-hander. And each has,
at various points, sought to cast some measure of blame
on the other for the 2001 bankruptcy of what was once
the seventh-largest company in America--an implosion
that wiped out 4,500 jobs and $70 billion of investors'
money while Lay, Skilling, and other top executives
walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars.
[continued]
Labor relations
Rio using
radio tags on cocktail servers
Harrah's says 'pilot program' is
to monitor customer service.
By Valerie Miller
LV Business Press
Harrah's Entertainment has put radio frequency
tracking tags on its cocktail waitresses at the Rio
All-Suites Hotel & Casino in what it calls an effort to
improve customer service. However, the gaming giant's
use of the technology on its employees is raising some
questions.
In what it refers to as a "pilot program," the casino is
using the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags,
which send out signals that are tracked through readers
installed at various locations. Harrah's has placed the
readers on tables and bars in the beverage and gaming
areas to determine how long it takes cocktail waitresses
to serve customers, Harrah's Entertainment Chief
Information Officer Tim Stanley said. "It just looks at
the cycle time between service," he explained.
[continued]
Unions
Anti-Wal-Mart unions snipe at each other
By Ann Zimmerman
The Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON -- WakeUpWalMart.com and Wal-Mart
Watch have two things in common: They criticize
Wal-Mart, and they criticize each other.
A few weeks ago, WakeUpWalMart.com, financed by
the grocery workers union, launched its latest TV ad
campaign questioning whether Christians should shop at
Wal-Mart given its low wages and benefits. At the same
time, the group sent a letter to Wal-Mart's chief
executive Lee Scott signed by 65 ministers. "Jesus would
not embrace Wal-Mart's values of greed and profits at
any cost, particularly when children suffer as a result
of those misguided values," the letter said.
[continued]
This article will be available to non-subscribers of the
Online Journal for up to seven days after it is
e-mailed.
Markets
Vegas
market ripe
for real estate fraud By Kevin Rademacher
InBusiness Las Vegas
As interest rates begin to creep higher and the
once-frantic real estate market begins to slow to a more
measured growth rate, mortgage regulators and law
enforcement officials are growing nervous.
The fear, they reason, is that those willing to
skirt the boundaries of legality will begin to press
their luck in search of a quick buck.
[continued]
Scandals
Indian Taker
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
The Wall Street Journal
Jack Abramoff was sui generis -- a personality out of control,
flamboyantly corrupt, engaged in bizarre antics that
your average Zegna-clad Washington lobbyist would never
have dreamed of. And yet one of the soggy paper bags
that we journalists have a hard time punching our way
out of is the notion that any scandal, when it reaches a
certain prominence, must be representative. Enron wasn't
the exception but the norm of corporate behavior. Jack
Abramoff is just the protruding left toe under a
bedsheet of K Street corruption.
In fact, the downfall of the man known in every
press account as a "Republican lobbyist" was not
remotely the upshot of workaday lobbying on behalf of
corporations over this or that tax or regulatory issue.
The media is wowed by the numbers in such cases but the
millions the government giveth or taketh away are less
impressive on corporate income statements, and are
usually competed away in the marketplace for a company's
goods or services.”
[continued]
This article will be available to non-subscribers of the
Online Journal for up to seven days after it is
e-mailed.
Property rights
Chamber
says 'no' to 2 initiatives
LV Business Press
The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce's Government Affairs Committee has
decided to oppose two of the initiative petitions that
are circulating this election season -- the Property Tax
Restraint Initiative and the Nevada Property Owners Bill
of Rights.
In both cases, the
chamber's opposition is based on the proposals’ expected
negative impact on business.
[continued]
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