They’re going fix everything with ‘green’ jobs, right?

Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley and Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford have their hearts in the right place. They want to do good. They truly want to leave the world a better place for their having been here and for their deeds. The location of their heads is another matter altogether.

When I spread the papers out on the table this morning, there was the report in the Review-Journal in which these Democratic lawmakers are touting the creation of “green-collar” jobs. A few minutes later I folded Investor’s Business Daily to the editorial page and read the editorial under the headline: “Green Stimu-less.”

State Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford and Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, both D-Las Vegas, arrive at a Thursday news conference in Las Vegas to announce Democrats' legislative priorities.

Like our Carson City-bound pair, their ilk in D.C. are all enamored of the blending two of their passions — spending money to stimulate the economy and saving the planet from global warming.

“We will be able to make renewable energy a priority that it has not been in the past,” Horsford boasted, saying Nevada could create 15,000 “green-collar jobs” weatherizing homes and making buildings more efficient.

This was quickly endorsed by the Nevada Conservation League, which said the plan would put Nevadans to work and allow consumers to save on energy costs.

We’ll have to conserve because “green” energy requires more green cash, because it is far more expensive to produce than cheap coal and natural gas, which most greenies oppose.

IBD’s editorial noted the latest Pew Research poll found Americans rank the “economy” and “jobs” as the nation’s top two priorities. The “environment” stood 16th out of 20, and “global warming” finished dead last.

“Does government really know better?” the editorialist asks. “Or is this whole ‘green economy’ push just one more big boondoggle — like ethanol?

“Recall the ethanol bandwagon that government got industry to hop on in 2007. It was boosted by the passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act, requiring the consumption of 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2020 — a fivefold increase over current levels.

“Not only did it not lower energy prices as promised, it has sent food prices through the roof.”

Five of Iowa’s 32 ethanol plants are bankrupt.

But you just can’t hold the liberals down or refresh their memories. Back in 1980 Time magazine was so enthusiastic over the promise of something called synfuels. Remember how the economic commissars of the Carter administration said that was the answer to the long lines for gasoline?

“The synfuel legislation does nothing to ease the immediate OPEC squeeze,” the Time article states, “but its long-range effect will be important. Initially, Carter had called for a ten-year, $88 billion effort to construct a network of synfuel plants that could produce up to 2.5 million bbl. of crude oil per day out of coal, shale rock and tar sands. That would enable the nation to cut its projected consumption of imported oil about one-third by 1990.”

The Democrats keep staring into the same cracked crystal ball.

Results of PEW survey

So-called deliberative process privilege is an affront to democracy

Trust me.

That’s pretty much what a district court judge told the Reno Gazette-Journal when he turned down the newspaper’s public records request for Gov. Jim Gibbons’ e-mails.

Judge James Russell said only six of 104 e-mails examined behind closed doors were public records and gave the governor 10 days to appeal that ruling before allowing the release of that half dozen e-mails.

Judge Russell refused to give the paper a log of the e-mails so it could argue for openness. A court master reviewed the e-mails and found 24 e-mails to be personal correspondence, 32 “transitory” e-mails describing “routine business activities” and 42 either transitory or protected by the deliberative process privilege.

Deliberative process privilege?

This is something, so for as I can find, that was hatched in a Colorado case years ago and has been tossed about by lawyers ever since. Why is the deliberative process secret? In fact that is how citizens and taxpayers can see is their interests are being served. If they get only the outcome, there is no way to tell why a decision is made.

In fact, the Nevada open meeting law, which like the public records law demands the public be given access to government deeds and misdeeds, states flatly, “In enacting this chapter, the Legislature finds and declares that all public bodies exist to aid in the conduct of the people’s business. It is the intent of the law that their actions be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly.”

So where is privilege for “deliberative process” in our state law?

When the Review-Journal sued the county for cell phone records, we got them, but the court included a specious comment that the deliberative process privilege “permits agency decision-makers to engage in that frank exchange of opinions and recommendations necessary to the formulation of policy without being inhibited by fear of later public disclosure.”

I hope the this case goes forward and this “privilege,” snatched out of thin air, is dispatched, spindled, shredded and stamped out.

Under this privilege, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich could argue he was merely engaged in a deliberative process, engaging in a frank exchange of opinions and recommendation and he should not have been inhibited by fear of later public disclosure that he was trying to extort money from would-be Senate appointees.

The Gazette-Journal sued in October after it was denied access to six months of e-mail sent from Gibbons’ state account to 10 people, including his former chief of staff, wife, Warren Trepp and others.

Gov. Jim Gibbons with Dennis Montgomery who claimed Gibbons took money from Warren Trepp who got government contracts.

Should newspapers embrace a nonprofit business model?

A New York Times op-ed piece this week caught my eye because of its use of that overused quote from Thomas Jefferson: “The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right. And were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter.”

Of course, Jefferson wrote that in 1787 — before the opposition press spent a couple of decades spewing some of the worst defamations ever to besmirch a public figure. By 1819 he was saying, “Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.”

The writers — Yale’s chief financial investment officer David Swensen and financial analyst Michael Schmidt — suggested we are perilously close to having government without newspapers. They cite the now familiar woes of major newspapers, declining advertising revenue, declining circulation, declining profits, bankruptcy, smaller papers.

They suggest that newspapers could survey by being turned into nonprofits supported by endowments, like some universities.

“As educational and literary organizations devoted to the ‘promotion of social welfare,’ endowed newspapers would benefit from Section 501(c)(3) of the I.R.S. code, which provides exemption from taxes on income and allows tax deductions for people who make contributions to eligible organizations,” the writers says.

“One constraint on an endowed institution is the prohibition in the same law against trying to ‘influence legislation’ or ‘participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates.’ While endowed newspapers would need to refrain from endorsing candidates for public office, they would still be free to participate forcefully in the debate over issues of public importance. The loss of endorsements seems minor in the context of the opinion-heavy Web.”

While a lot of people on opposite ends of the political spectrum might cheer such a restriction, it seems a bit confining. You wind up with a newspaper that owes its soul a handful of wealthy contributors with an ax to grind. Sort of like the Sun.

There have been several business models for newspapers over the years. I hope someone finds a new one soon.

The march of the coneheads

First Gulliver had a length of intestine removed, now Guinness has an infected paw. We have a week of clanging coneheads to look forward to.

Rogers turns television station and Web site into propaganda arm

I’ll say this for Jim Rogers, he’s nothing if not tenacious.

Rogers has turned his Sunbelt Broadcasting television station, KVBC-TV, Channel 3, and the station’s Web site into his own Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in his quest to strongarm the Legislature into providing more tax money for higher education — of which he happens to be chancellor — in the face of the governor’s call for drastic cuts. The station is running dozens of public service announcements and the Web site points people to editorials supporting the cause.

Public Service Announcement on KVBC Web site

He’s done the same thing with the publicly funded Web site for the Nevada System of Higher Education, filling it with arguments for more public funding.

Flier posted on NSHE Web site

There is now a Web site called EducateNevada.org that is linked from the KVBC site. It contains public service announcements, talking points, requests for individual stories, calls for action, how to contact lawmakers and join the campaign.

I wonder what the business executives quoted in today’s Review-Journal questioning the efficacy of our education system think of this.

Compare and contrast: Is it unfair to ask university students to pay more?

Comparative tuition

Ever since I read a passage in University Chancellor Jim Rogers’s speech on the state of the system, I’ve casting about looking for some way to compare his stats with those of other states.

This is what Rogers said:

“The state pays about 80% of the System’s cost. The student pays 20%.  If the state were to cut its contribution by 36%, the state would then contribute 51% and the students would contribute 49%, an increase of more than two and a half times our current tuition and fees. An increase in tuition and fees to fill the hole the Governor describes would make tuition and fees so high that it would be cheaper to go out of state to college. At a time when more Nevadans are unemployed and underemployed than ever before, how many could afford to attend Nevada’s colleges?”

Eureka, I found it.

It turns out the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity, and Accountability looked at how much the nation’s universities are subsidized by taxes and how much is paid by student tuition.

The stats are a couple of years old now and were trending upward every year, so there is no telling what the stats are now.

Here is what Delta Project found:

“Students are paying more of the total cost of their education at all institutions except private research universities. From 2002 to 2006, the share of educational costs represented by student tuition rose from just over one-third to nearly one-half at public four-year institutions.  At private master’s and bachelor’s institutions, students are paying between 75 and 85 percent of the full cost of their education.”

Would 18-year-olds in U.S. accept free newspapers?

We know newspapers are suffering in the United States, but the hurt is international.

In France President Nicolas Sarkozy is offering a number of efforts to buoy the sinking newspaper business. He is offering tax breaks and is increasing the advertising the government purchases in newspapers.

Sarkozy also proposes giving newspaper subscriptions to all 18-year-olds, jointly funded by the government and the newspaper firms.

My question is: If we were to do that in this country, how many takers would there be?

What do you think?

I think I’m going to change his name to Cadillac

First Gulliver apparently ate some toadstools in the yard this past Fourth of July and nearly died. The vet bill was huge.

Now he starts showing similar symptoms this past Monday night and we take him to the veterinary emergency room, where they treat him with atropine (the same stuff used to treat soldiers exposed to nerve gas) thinking he’s been somehow poisoned.

Turns out he had some rare abnormality in which the small intestines telescope inside themselves, like turning a balloon partially inside out. This effectively blocks everything.

We took him a special veterinary surgery and they snipped out a length of intestine and pound or two of our savings account. He had not one of these rare intussusceptions but two.

He is home now lying about, which is hardly different from his normal behavior, but he is being nursed back to health and getting a little attention from his sister Guinness.

UNLV budget debate actually begins now that childish chanting is over

Now that we’ve had the “highwayman” approach — stand and deliver or else — by the mob of students and faculty at UNLV Thursday evening, we are beginning to get a few facts and rational arguments, instead of slogans, chants and crude signs.

Casey Hendrickson over at KXNT-AM, 840 snapped a few of my synapses when he e-mailed Friday seeking fodder for his evening call-in show. He wrote: “Some short time ago you published an article on how UNLV professors were spending little time in the classroom teaching.  All while collecting six figure incomes.  I am having problems finding this article.  Could you please send me a link, or copy of the article?”

It took only a couple of minutes to lay my hands on it and forward the URL. Hendrickson used the story to further a lively debate on the program.

The story was one by special projects writer Alan Maimon and it appeared on June 12, 2008. Maimon reported that UNLV had gone on a hiring binge in the past year, hiring 60 more professors and administrators at a cost of 8 percent more than in the prior year.

This was reported while Gov. Jim Gibbons was telling the university system to reduce spending by about $97 million for the 2009-2011 budget period.

Maimon also noted, “In 2007, 315 top academic personnel at UNLV got more than $100,000 in state-funded salary, up from 270 just a year earlier.”

Further down in the story he reported, “The university’s stated expectation — though it falls short of a requirement — is that full-time, non-research faculty members will teach three classes a semester. On average, each of those faculty taught between three and four courses at the bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral level in the fall 2007 semester, a Review-Journal analysis shows. But of the university’s 828 professors who taught at all, more than 30 percent handled fewer than three courses.

“UNLV has roughly 960 full-time faculty, which means about 130 professors didn’t teach at all in the fall semester. Some of those professors were doing research, were on leave or were given administrative roles for the semester.

“A full professor at UNLV makes an average of $114,500 a year, about $5,000 more than the average for full professors at public doctoral institutions nationwide, according to the American Association of University Professors.”

Chancellor Jim Rogers

But Chancellor Jim Rogers forgets the fat years and complains about the coming lean years.

“You have heard your Governor, propose to cut the budget for your colleges and universities by 36%.  Let me tell you what this will mean for higher education,” he says in his state of the system address.

“Last fiscal year, operating budget cuts of 4.5% or $ 28.3 million were made, and this fiscal year cuts of 7.92% or $41.9 million were made.  These were reductions to what was already starvation-level funding.   As a consequence, you are seeing a reduction in classes and an increase in the number of students jammed into each class.  This means that students will take much longer to graduate, it will cost them more money and they will lose time when they could be working and adding real value to Nevada’s economy.  At every campus, programs have been cut – programs that were part of building the quality of life of Nevada’s communities.”

But over at Nevada Policy Research Institute, Andy Matthews, vice president for communications, sent an e-mail answer to that.

“It is also deeply ironic to hear Chancellor Rogers state that Nevada needs to contribute more to higher education, as reality strongly suggests otherwise,” Matthews writes. “From Fiscal Year 2002 through Fiscal Year 2007, legislative spending on higher education increased by 60 percent, even as student enrollment increased by only 22.9 percent during that same period.”

NPRI’s Patrick Gibbons points out, “Even with the new budget cuts, NSHE will still have $1.28 billion to spend over the next biennium, 25 percent more than it had during the 2001-03 biennium. Adjust for inflation, and there is virtually no difference between the 2010-11 and the 2001-03 appropriations for higher education.

“The Nevada System of Higher Education does face tough choices.  It must learn how to prioritize spending, eliminate waste, use technology to lower costs, and get back to basics—i.e. actually educating students, not just providing jobs to Ph.D.s.”

Geoffrey Lawrence of the same NPRI says tuition at UNLV is artificially low.

“According to data maintained by the National Center for Educational Statistics, Nevada boasts the lowest tuition rates in the country,” he says. “In fact, NCES data shows that for 2006-2007, the last year for which data is available, the cost of tuition and mandatory fees at Nevada’s public four-year universities was only 50 percent of the national average.  In other words, students in the system are subsidized more than any other group of students in the country and pay only half of what the average American student pays to go to a subsidized university.

Now we’re talking facts and figures and not chanting slogans and demanding other people’s money.

UNLV rally as persuasive as a temper tantrum

Since when did crowds of people milling about, shouting profanities and waving crudely painted signs get elevated to the level of persuasive argumentation?

To me the scene at UNLV Thursday night had all the eloquence and persuasive power of an organized temper tantrum. They should’ve been sent to their rooms without supper.

But no, the children seemed to be proud of themselves.

“This is great!” UNLV student body Vice President Vik Sehdev was quoted as saying. “Last time this happened was, like, in the ’60s.”

Yes, and before we had those all those highly regarded expressions of community umbrage known as lynch mobs.

The rally was a reaction to the governor’s proposed higher education budget cuts. Instead of serious debate and reasoned rhetoric from the halls of higher education, we got outrage.

As reporter Richard Lake wrote:

“Students are outraged.

“Administrators are outraged.

“Professors, staff and activists are outraged.”

And university system Chancellor Jim Rogers and UNLV President David Ashley were their cheerleaders, whipping up anger and avarice for other people’s money instead of enlightened discourse.

There were chants of “Rogers, Rogers, Rogers.” Did he score a touchdown?

There were chants of “No more cuts, no more cuts …” ad nauseam.

One student said she was there as a “show of force.” Just what we need, campus where a show of force trumps everything.

How about some speeches that are more than petulant whining? How about written essays that offer solutions instead of form letters to which the students can affix their “Xs”? How about rationale letters to the legislators and/or the newspapers? How about letters to campus newspaper? Or even comments posted on the online Rebel Yell story about the rally? Last time I looked, there were none.

They were proud of themselves. For what?

Several signs said, “We are your future.”

Now there’s something to raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

Students at UNLV protest proposed budget cuts