Today is my father's birthday. He is enjoying it immensly, I'm sure, having been a resident of Heaven for the past...nearly 20 years. But this entry is not about that. It deals with yet another abuse by the media. Boy do they love to hide behind their favorite amendment. I doubt they are even aware of all the others.
Being an honest representative is not an easy job. There is so much pressure from both the entrenched politicos and the afore-mentioned media, to become just another one of the good-ol-boys club that it can be extremely frustrating sometimes. They actually wait, eagerly to see a mistake made or an error committed so it can be blown out of proportion and reported as a high crime and a glaring example of corruption. Just such an occurrence happened to me during this special session.
There is an obscure portion of campaign finance law that dictates solicitation of donations before, during and after a special session. Nevada is one of a few states unique in this.
George Harris of Liberty Watch and Ed Vogel, a Las Vegas Review Journal reporter watched to see if I would forget to disable the campaign contribution page on my site. I forgot, of course, since I have received no contributions through it since it's launch, and with the special session coming up, my mind was elsewhere. It is a stupid mistake, true, but it certainly doesn't rise to the level of duplicity Harris and Vogel are claiming.
Mr. Vogel accosted me in the Assembly chamber yesterday evening after he sent me a $5 contribution asking why I was purposely deceiving the voters by keeping that page active. I am not a webmaster, but I did manage to get the page removed and called my campaign manager to delete his corresponding site. According to a young man in the elections division, 294A.300 and 160 deal with this issue pretty clearly and I have returned Mr. Vogel's $5 and Mr. Harris' $10 to them certified mail, along with a formal letter detailing the law and why contributions such as theirs cannot be retained.
This is where the attacks come in. Mr. Vogel wrote in his article that he is going to demand that the Secretary of State go after me to the full extent of the law. These men want to not merely see me out of office but to see my career ruined. Do you remember Jimmy Stewart's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? Of course, it is just another form of dirty politics and things haven't changed since then.
Assemblyman Bob Beers (considering adopting the nickname "Honest Bob" merely to enrage certain people.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
Our Enemy...the media
I had the unique pleasure of viewing the back of my head on the news this evening. A camera caught me during a recess...playing a solitaire game on my PDA. Of course, the voice over on the news report mentioned nothing about it being a recess. As far as the news media is concerned, especially if you happen to be a Republican, legislators are supposed to function as minor dieties, we shouldn't even have to go the the bathroom.
If playing solitaire on my spare time is as far as they can go for complaint, I feel I'm doing pretty well. I've heard about the lives of reporters and the amount of depravity they exist in. Continual arrests for drunk driving is only the tip of the iceberg where they are concerned. Being a simple lawmaker...? That sounds like a much safer lifestyle. I'll stick with that and leave the degeneracy to the media.
If playing solitaire on my spare time is as far as they can go for complaint, I feel I'm doing pretty well. I've heard about the lives of reporters and the amount of depravity they exist in. Continual arrests for drunk driving is only the tip of the iceberg where they are concerned. Being a simple lawmaker...? That sounds like a much safer lifestyle. I'll stick with that and leave the degeneracy to the media.
Common Sense...Part 1
The economy is a mess. Ok, so pointing out the obvious doesn't make for intriguing reading, but the truth is still there. The question to be asked is, what do we do about it? As a Nevada Legislator, I am writing this while in recess for a special session. My state is facing a budget shortfall of nearly a billion dollars and the Governor called us back to fix this mess. Unfortunately the leadership has no idea how to look to the long term, everything is a short-lived bandage of moving immediate monies hither and yon. In order to do something long term, we need to look for funding sources like a couple dollars on the room tax and a state lottery, not just cost cutting measures.
If we have to cut costs, why not do it in areas of common sense. Gas is becoming a gourmet item, so how about having online filing and fee payment available in every government agency 24/7. That way businesses and taxpayers can save time and money...and deal with the government on their time schedule, not bureauracy's. Another way to save would be to stop printing in any language other than english. We would save millions of dollars and thousands of trees.
In Nevada it is actually a conflict of interest for the state to pay lobbyists, but we do, in the millions of dollars once expenses are factored in. Just obeying that law would save a huge chunk of the shortfall, not to mention cleaning up the image of the state a bit.
That's just a couple of ideas. Not politically correct, but common sense is like that.
If we have to cut costs, why not do it in areas of common sense. Gas is becoming a gourmet item, so how about having online filing and fee payment available in every government agency 24/7. That way businesses and taxpayers can save time and money...and deal with the government on their time schedule, not bureauracy's. Another way to save would be to stop printing in any language other than english. We would save millions of dollars and thousands of trees.
In Nevada it is actually a conflict of interest for the state to pay lobbyists, but we do, in the millions of dollars once expenses are factored in. Just obeying that law would save a huge chunk of the shortfall, not to mention cleaning up the image of the state a bit.
That's just a couple of ideas. Not politically correct, but common sense is like that.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Prostitution
Oscar Goodman, the current mayor of Las Vegas, has declared that the Las Vegas Strip should be adorned with brothels fancy and large enough to be considered "palaces". For some reason he believes that the women who work the sex trade feel they have found their dream job. The mayor couldn't have it more wrong.
Nevada is a unique state. Of the 17 counties that make up Nevada, 15 have legalized the occupation of prostitute, under certain conditions. The two urbanized counties, Clark and Washoe where Las Vegas and Reno are, have not. If you turn a trick in either of those two counties, it is illegal...or is it?
The yellow pages portion of the phone book in Clark County is nearly 6" thick. If one turns to the section for "massage", a vast selection of full page ads assaults the eyes with photography best left for a mans magazine. Considering the cost of a full page ad in the yellow pages, these simple storefront parlors must be doing a landslide business. At last estimate, the phone company was pulling in over 20 million a year on just that section of ads. Compared to what is the estimated income of the massage parlors that amounts to peanuts.
Over 2 billion a year...that is the estimated cash flow being generated by the illegal sex trade in Nevada. Now if the prostitutes were all the happy hookers of Mayor Goodman's imagination, this would not be such a bad thing, outside of the illegality, that is. The reality is, sadly, something else altogether. The majority of the parlors, massage brothels is a truer description, function as owners of underage oriental slaves, many of them trafficked into the United States from overseas. They live lives of terror and desperation, forced to accede to whatever perverse desire their current "client" wishes to fulfill. I have had the opportunity to interview several women who escaped this existence...it cannot be called a life...and many of the stories they tell would horrify Steven King.
What can be done about this? Currently, very little. Because of the vast amount of money generated by this industry, even the local office of the FBI has little interest in upholding the law. Almost all of the law enforcement officials won't even acknowledge it as a problem. Apparently the abuse of children is not as important as campaign donations. I do have some ideas, but this is such a hot topic that I cannot share them here. Needless to say, they could work, even to the point of inconveniencing the overseas crime organizations involved.
If you are uncertain on this issue, ask yourself this...how would you feel if the girl who was kidnapped and forced into underage prostitution was your daughter? Would that change your mind a bit? Or does your integrity have a price?
Nevada is a unique state. Of the 17 counties that make up Nevada, 15 have legalized the occupation of prostitute, under certain conditions. The two urbanized counties, Clark and Washoe where Las Vegas and Reno are, have not. If you turn a trick in either of those two counties, it is illegal...or is it?
The yellow pages portion of the phone book in Clark County is nearly 6" thick. If one turns to the section for "massage", a vast selection of full page ads assaults the eyes with photography best left for a mans magazine. Considering the cost of a full page ad in the yellow pages, these simple storefront parlors must be doing a landslide business. At last estimate, the phone company was pulling in over 20 million a year on just that section of ads. Compared to what is the estimated income of the massage parlors that amounts to peanuts.
Over 2 billion a year...that is the estimated cash flow being generated by the illegal sex trade in Nevada. Now if the prostitutes were all the happy hookers of Mayor Goodman's imagination, this would not be such a bad thing, outside of the illegality, that is. The reality is, sadly, something else altogether. The majority of the parlors, massage brothels is a truer description, function as owners of underage oriental slaves, many of them trafficked into the United States from overseas. They live lives of terror and desperation, forced to accede to whatever perverse desire their current "client" wishes to fulfill. I have had the opportunity to interview several women who escaped this existence...it cannot be called a life...and many of the stories they tell would horrify Steven King.
What can be done about this? Currently, very little. Because of the vast amount of money generated by this industry, even the local office of the FBI has little interest in upholding the law. Almost all of the law enforcement officials won't even acknowledge it as a problem. Apparently the abuse of children is not as important as campaign donations. I do have some ideas, but this is such a hot topic that I cannot share them here. Needless to say, they could work, even to the point of inconveniencing the overseas crime organizations involved.
If you are uncertain on this issue, ask yourself this...how would you feel if the girl who was kidnapped and forced into underage prostitution was your daughter? Would that change your mind a bit? Or does your integrity have a price?
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Immigration
I have a bill in draft form ready to be considered in the 2009 session. It mirrors the Oklohoma law that shut off social welfare to illegal immigrants and punished those businesses knowingly hiring illegals in preferance to citizens. I have already been told by members of my own party, GOP, that the bill is dead on arrival because implimenting such a law would bankrupt the state.
Here is my problem with that: when we take office, we are sworn in. This means we swear an oath to uphold the law and the constitution. There is a reason these people are called illegal immigrants, they have broken our law. If they have been sent back and crossed the boarder illegally a second time they are guilty of a felony. If a business hires a group of illegals...all of them using the same social security number on their fake IDs, then that business is breaking the law. Nowhere in the oath of office that I took did it say that I was to ignore lawbreaking if I found that law to be inconvenient. Expediency is the currency of cowards and the avenue of cretins and a sure path to a life of corruption.
I say, build the wall. Put it up 40 feet high and send it 40 feet deep. Make it impossible to climb over and impossible to tunnel through. Sure the United nations will scream and Mexico will call it an act of war, and our president will be uninvited to bridge games by our southern neighbor...so what? We can help the farmers by putting Ellis Island structures every 50 miles and allowing those who want to work to be checked out, set up with a temporary visa, tracked, taxed, and sent on their way...legally. We can also filter out the bad guys, the terrorists, those carrying the next plague virus and the drug runners. If Mexico gets upset becasue their drug profits drop, again, so what? This is our country. It does not belong to the UN or to any of Bush's foreign friends, at least not yet. We have over a hundred thousand homeless combat vets without jobs in this country. They have earned a job, not one illegal can say that, at least not honestly.
Here is my problem with that: when we take office, we are sworn in. This means we swear an oath to uphold the law and the constitution. There is a reason these people are called illegal immigrants, they have broken our law. If they have been sent back and crossed the boarder illegally a second time they are guilty of a felony. If a business hires a group of illegals...all of them using the same social security number on their fake IDs, then that business is breaking the law. Nowhere in the oath of office that I took did it say that I was to ignore lawbreaking if I found that law to be inconvenient. Expediency is the currency of cowards and the avenue of cretins and a sure path to a life of corruption.
I say, build the wall. Put it up 40 feet high and send it 40 feet deep. Make it impossible to climb over and impossible to tunnel through. Sure the United nations will scream and Mexico will call it an act of war, and our president will be uninvited to bridge games by our southern neighbor...so what? We can help the farmers by putting Ellis Island structures every 50 miles and allowing those who want to work to be checked out, set up with a temporary visa, tracked, taxed, and sent on their way...legally. We can also filter out the bad guys, the terrorists, those carrying the next plague virus and the drug runners. If Mexico gets upset becasue their drug profits drop, again, so what? This is our country. It does not belong to the UN or to any of Bush's foreign friends, at least not yet. We have over a hundred thousand homeless combat vets without jobs in this country. They have earned a job, not one illegal can say that, at least not honestly.
Racism
Yesterday my radio was flooded with reports about Don Imus' ever-occuring bigotry. I have never liked the personality this raodio host portrays and I wasn't surprised that yet again he stuck his foot into his mouth, cramming it in all the way to his knee. What surprised me was the quality of the debate that followed. I did not hear one mention of Dr. Martin Luthor King. Have we moved along the path of political correctness so far that his words, "by the quality of his character and not the color of his skin" have now vanished over the horizon?
Imus' mouth is only a symptom. If you have skin as pale as mine and you question Obama's lack of a substancial campaign plank, you will be called a racist. If you wonder if Jesse Jackson will ever get a real job, you are accused of bigotry. Character is ceasing to matter and color is in. Well, today's culture could not be more wrong. Character does matter, regardless of your race, regardless of the circumstances you were born into, regardless of your peer group and regardless of your parents, or lack thereof...character matters. How you speak matters. How you treat your neighbors matters. How you add to the lives of the people around you, rather than taking away matters. Color should have to do with art, not politics.
Imus' mouth is only a symptom. If you have skin as pale as mine and you question Obama's lack of a substancial campaign plank, you will be called a racist. If you wonder if Jesse Jackson will ever get a real job, you are accused of bigotry. Character is ceasing to matter and color is in. Well, today's culture could not be more wrong. Character does matter, regardless of your race, regardless of the circumstances you were born into, regardless of your peer group and regardless of your parents, or lack thereof...character matters. How you speak matters. How you treat your neighbors matters. How you add to the lives of the people around you, rather than taking away matters. Color should have to do with art, not politics.
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