Kenny you do not have many more moons to look like a winner so why not do the one day special session, cap our real-estate taxes at 6% or CPI whichever is less and get on with life. What a great image to go into the regular session with. For a change you and the legislators both are winners. We know from our legislator and candidate survey that they are 100% behind doing a cap so lets do it now when nothing else is bugging them. We all know that when they get in session all bets are off and those in charge like to see the really important things held until the last hours of the session when no one can predict the outcome of anything. Let’s do it now before a lot of new faces confuse the issue.

We already have over 2,500 souls in Incline Village who are being taxed out of their homes and cannot stand another hit of any kind and those of us in the southern Nevada are only a breath away from being in the same fix. Certainly you know that with all of the ballot questions which will end up being in the upcoming legislature that it will be a free for all like none we have seen in recent years including the last one.

REPEALING THE $830,000,000 TAXES OF THE 2003 LEGISLATURE and NO GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE MAY SERVE IN THE LEGISLATURE will be issues to be voted on by we registered, tax paying citizens in the upcoming election. Let’s hope we do an overwhelming job of voting for each of the issues and then let’s see how the legislatures handle the issues in the 2005 session. It should be fun.

NEVADA LEGISLATURE AND CLARK COUNTY COMMISSIONER CANDIDATES PLEASE NOTE: We have heard from about a third of you on our survey, which is very good, but why not have 100% of you responding? You still have time. In case you have forgotten we want to hear from you on who most inspires you, (like who is your hero?) and do you favor a 6% cap or less on our real-estate taxes. Also would you take action to make the required change either in a special session or very early on in the 2005 session so that the assessors will have time to implement the change for the 2005 tax year? All of you who have not responded please do so now. You can do it by an e-mail sent to info@nevadaseniors.com. Let us hear from you in order that we may announce the results at our regular meetings.

NSC members, be sure to ask for answers to the tax cap question of all legislative and Clark County Commission candidates that you meet.

WATER ,WATER, WATER WHAT IS HAPPENING TO IT?
The August issue of Time Magazine has a must read story on water. According to the history of the tree rings we haven’t seen anything yet. Mulroy, county commissioners and city council people – you had better read this story and my advice is to fire Mulroy and company and find some one competent to take us through what looks like the worst dry period in our life time. To those of you who came from the Midwest, do you remember the dust storms of the Dakotas in the 1930s? Well as a kid I do and I remember how farmers from other states brought their cattle to Wisconsin and to the most northern part of the state to have grazing grass. I also remember when plain old hay had a tremendous price. Oh yes, the dust storms of the Dakotas were so bad the soil banked up as high as the fences and the dirt clouds were in the air for hundreds of miles. I talked to our friend Dr. Larry Paulson Sunday evening and his thinking is that we have no more than two years before this will happen here and then even Hoover Dam will have trouble generating electricity, let alone there being sufficient water for this uncontrolled growth. The story is at www.time.com.
(Ed. – Select Science and Health or search for “Why the West Is Burning”)

THERE IS OIL AND POLITICS OF COURSE
Another must read article is in the August issue of the Forbes magazine. According to Steven H. Hanke, a professor of applied economics at The John Hopkins University in Baltimore and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C., there is more than enough oil at affordable prices in the world. His study shows since 1971 the world has produced 767 million barrels of oil and still has 1,028 billion barrels left in reserve. His feeling is that we should stop filling the reserve and prices will go down again. There doesn’t seem to be a problem in Europe either (where I was in April) with so many Mercedes and BMWs filling the streets and at the same time paying at least twice what we do – so what’s to worry about? You can find his articles on the web at www.forbes.com/hanke.