Nevada Seniors Coalition

NSC Contributing Authors
Dr. Larry J. Paulson, PH.D.
President Ken Mahal
Vice-President Vern Perry
Director Knight Allen

 Senior Citizen Links
AARP
Federal Senior Citizen Site
Senior Net (Computer Instruction)
Seniors In Las Vegas
The Seniors Citizen's League  
Seniors America  
Internet Resources from AARP
CATO Institute
Medicare-Medicaid
Social Security Administration
Citizens Against Government Waste

 Federal Government
First GOV
White House
U.S. Senate
U.S. House of Representatives
Search the U.S. Blue Pages
Congressional Legislative Information
Senator Harry Reid
Senator John Ensign
Congresswoman Shelley Berkley
Congressman Dean Heller
Congressman Jon Porter

 State of Nevada
Nevada Official Website
Governor's Home Page
Lt. Governor's Homepage
Attorney General's Homepage
Secretary of State's Homepage
Nevada Legislature
Department of Motor Vehicles
Department of Taxation
Nevada Forms Clearinghouse 
MyNevada (State & Local Services)

 Nevada Cities
Las Vegas
Henderson
Reno
Sparks
Boulder City
Carson City
Mesquite
Nevada League of Cities & Municipalities

 Clark County
Clark County Homepage
Citizen's Area Transit (CAT)
Regional Transportation Commission
McCarran International Airport
Metropolitan Police Department
Nellis Air Force Base

 Media Outlets
KVBC-Las Vegas Ch 3
KVVU-Las Vegas Ch 5
KLAS-Las Vegas Ch 8
KTNV-Las Vegas Ch 13
Nevada Newspapers
Las Vegas Review Journal
Las Vegas Sun
KTVN-Reno Ch 2
KRNV-Reno Ch 4
KOLO-Reno Ch 8
Reno Gazette Journal
Opinion Journal Online from the WSJ

 Health
Alzheimer's Association
Alzheimer's Disease Education 
American Diabetes Association
American Heart Association
Cancer Society
Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs
The Institute of Medicine
National Heart Lung & Blood Institute
Homeopathic Medicine
National Institute of Health
National Kidney Foundation
Prevention Magazine
WEB MD

 Senior Law
Law Guru
National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys
National Senior Citizen Law Center

        
Taxes, Taxes, Power and In The Hole
by Ken Mahal, NSC President
Originally published on  August 9, 2007 - reprinted with permission

ALREADY YET WE ARE GOING TO TALK ABOUT TAXES ON OUR HOME.
   Sharron Angle has lit the battle over our real-estate taxes and with a very good start as far as money is concerned. Her $200,000 contribution is half way to where she wants to be in order to hire professional signature getters for the Prop 13 type initiative she is promoting with her organization we the people Nevada. By the way you can see the details in their web page www.wethepeoplenevada.org . I have mixed emotions about what is being proposed by rolling back home values to some still undetermined year and then set a 1% property tax rate on that value and limits annual increases to 2% a year. Presently based on what the legislature did in 2005 we have taxes frozen at the 2004 level with a maximum 3% cap on residential property taxes and 8% on all other properties which would primarily be for income producing property. I lived with this idea of income producing property having a higher rate than non income. I understood it but didn’t like it. California Prop 13 kept people in their homes and I hope it stays that way for us because home owners and particularly retirees don’t have a lot going for most of them. By the way take a good look at your tax statement and bring your questions to our meeting the second Thursday of September which is the 13th. We are going to have Clark County Assessor Mark Schofield as our guest speaker who can answer any questions you may have as well as be prepared to hear what he has to say on where he thinks we are best off in the years to come with our residential real-estate taxes. Those of you who were with us in 2004-05 will remember that we started the tax issue very early on account of our concern for higher taxes and Mark Schofield was a big help. We ended up working for the 3% cap which is what we have and if there was a way to lock that in I would be very happy to keep it that way. The problem with what we have now is that the legislature did pass the legislation that gives us this protection and by the same token the next legislature could decide to undo it and go for something much more onerous. That is something we certainly cannot afford to go to sleep on. If you pay attention to our politicians locally and at the state level you know they are always being pressed to do more of something that costs money and the two best places to get money out of our pockets is to raise our real-estate taxes and/or to increase the sales tax. So let’s wait to hear from Mark in September and go from there. In the meantime we will also be in touch with Sharon Angle to learn more about what she is thinking of for their initiative.

SPEAKING OF TAXES ISN’T IT TIME TO KILL SOME TAXES?
   If you pay attention to our Water Authority Queen who makes $261,604 plus benefits maybe it is time we take our sales tax back that she throws around like there is no bottom in her tax payer money bag and which she spends how ever she pleases. That ¼% sales tax produces well over a $100,000,000 a year to waste any way she wants to since her board are also the elected city councils and Clark County Commissioner representatives who go along with any thing Mulroy wants. So it is up to the taxpayers to begin to raise heck over this tax money that grows each year and she spends it on things that people and businesses should do themselves like turning grass to desert landscaping. Her thinking is flawed because with every one of our tax dollars she uses to subsidize converting grass to rock to use less water, well what do you think happens? Another 100,000 people move into the valley to use up the water we saved. How nuts do you think that rational is? The more people we grow because there is more water will also bring a fair percentage that will be on welfare that again just eats up more of our tax dollars. So let’s start an initiative to kill the ¼% sales tax to the Southern Nevada Water Authority. You can say well Ken what should we do with the money we save? Just cut the sales tax back a ¼% that is a direct savings on anything we buy.

HARRY LIKES HOT AIR AND WIND, NOT NUCLEAR AND COAL. WHY?
   Senator Harry our leader in Washington D.C. why can’t we use coal from our neighbor the state of Wyoming? They are good people and have an abundance of coal that we could us in a couple of large coal fired generating plants. Now if you have done your home work you cannot deny that the modern day burners and scrubbers make coal one of the cleanest and cheapest fuels we can use for generating electricity. It is really right next door so why not give it a shot. Also what is wrong with nuclear generating plants we have had them for many years with no trouble and with the present day technology in our navy carriers and submarines there is just no justification for not using nuclear in our community. Think of it senator tens of thousands of our navy sailors and marines have lived next to it aboard the subs and carriers now some fifty years with nary a problem.
I know you are promoting wind and sun, only one problem with the two of them we don’t have the thousands of acres of suitable land waiting for the huge fields of sun panels and wind machines. By now even you must realize the economics just isn’t there to build these wind and sun panels because if it were economical it would have been done a long time ago. You can say Ken how do you know what you say is so? Well in my 86+ years I know by now that when it fits the capitalist system we build it. I like solar systems and have worked on them from time to time over the last 50 years and do know that the cost of building and maintaining these things just cannot compete or they would have been on line years ago. And senator just because you say do it doesn’t mean it can or is going to be done. Some years back statistics were stated that umpteen thousand acres of solar panels mounted in Nevada could create enough electric energy for the entire United States. Oh and by the way solar panels really don’t do us much good in the dark of night.
I like the coal plants with cheap coal from our neighbor in Wyoming. Let’s do it Harry.

OUR DONUT HOLE CAUGHT UP WITH US.
   Seniors you know what I mean by the donut hole. We used the first $2,400 worth of drugs so Humana says. It seems impossible but when you look at the prices they tack onto some of the drugs it just blows ones mind. Now I am scurrying around trying to find pills that do what the expensive ones did but with a slightly different way of getting there like in one case where the prescription reads 25-100 that I know means one part of the pill is a medicine that is equal to 25mgs of the pill and the other part of the pill is 100mgs. So what do we learn to do? Now we buy two medicines of 25mgs. and 100mgs. As each separate pills so they cost $8 whereas in one pill its $112. Now there is a little more to it than that but not much. The medicine is the same. Crazy isn’t? Now why doesn’t the pill pusher insurance company push that so that we would not run into the dam donut hole which was a glaring mistake to begin with. Makes me think a little of the 1,200 pages for Medicare one of the candidates for president came up with about ten years ago and we had to kill it. No one would listen this time so what can we do? Punt.

HOME