Stupidity and the latest round of state budget woes.

Dumb is fabricating a crisis in order to extract more money from a from a state budget that is bleeding from every orifice... money for expanding holding corrals, bringing in large numbers of horses, hiring a new employee, conducting a new range study, having to feed hundreds of horses that are brought in, fighting lawsuits, etc... all over a "problem" that doesn't really exist.

Dumber involves the Governor of a state that is vitally dependent upon tourism revenue alienating those tourists by allowing an egregious attack on "Nevada's own herd," the Virginia Range horses. (So far this year gaming tax collections are down about $65 million dollars.)

In every major poll between two-thirds and 70 percent of the respondents were in favor of protecting the wild horses. If the recent Nevada-Appeal poll is any indicator, this ratio has actually climbed to over 80%.

Governor Gibbons, those are your tourists speaking!

Gibbons is leaving both Democrats and Republicans scratching their heads as to why the he insists on being the engineer and allowing Lesperance to shovel in more coal for a train wreck that can only produce more financial hardship for Nevada and for our citizens whose livelihoods depend on tourist dollars.

What has to be done:

1. Dump Tony Lesperance

   The man appears to be either a compulsive liar or incompetent, or perhaps both. He has shown himself to be a crusader who is not only wasteful of precious taxpayer dollars but is running the risk of triggering a tourism boycott that could make the current revenue shortfall look like a warm-up act. Some very well financed people from out of state are just waiting for the opportunity to vilify Nevada and encourage tourists to "Go somewhere else," presumably to their own entertainment and recreational venues.

   So Step 1 has to be to get the liars and incompetents out of the picture, save our tax dollars wherever possible, and stop alienating our tourists. Lesperance & Co. need to get off at the next stop.

2. Don't waste more taxpayer money

   The last thing we need during a budget crisis is to hire a new management person when someone already experienced and capable is running the Virginia Range horse program. There has been no need demonstrated yet to hire yet another taxpayer-funded boss.

   We don't need to spend money on more round-ups, more corrals and expensive feed for rounded up horses unless the incompetents at the Department of Agriculture so alienate the cooperating horse groups that they stop taking "excess" horses from the state to hold for adoption and they stop raising funds for emergency winter feed for the herd. (The horse groups currently hold horses for adoption at their own expense and they provide emergency winter feeding if needed.)

   We don't need to spend money on a new study until people at the Department of Agriculture can demonstrate that they understand the study that they already have. The existing NRCS study already provides a pretty solid baseline for horse management, assuming that the persons interpreting the study can do simple arithmetic.

3. Let the current Horse Program Manager run his program

   Virginia Range Estray Program Manager Mike Holmes is arguably the most knowledgeable person in the department about the Virginia Range and the horses. As someone who has never lied to the groups, he is the person whose observations and conclusions hold some credibility with the field active volunteers.

   One of the primary reasons the Virginia Range issue has become a crisis is that the Department has excluded the one person on their staff who actually knows what's going on from the discussions it has had with the wild horse groups. (I suppose if you're trying to advance a big lie, it doesn't work to bring a straight talker to the table.)

   For reasons that defy explanation, Director Lesperance is shifting a huge, unfunded and open ended financial and labor burden from the wild horse groups onto the backs of the taxpayers and he is quite likely damaging Nevada's tourism economy in the process.

How can Governor Gibbons stand by and let this stuff happen? He's throwing good money after bad and this whole fiasco stands to further harm Nevada's tourism industry and the vital revenues that the state derives from tourists. If just ten percent of potential Nevada tourists say "Screw Nevada," we'll see a whole new round of painful cuts.

Is this fiscal responsibility? Absolutely not!

A new sniglet

Those of you who remember Rich Hall and "Not Necessarily the News" should remember sniglets. A sniglet is a neologism defined by Wikipedia as "any word that doesn't appear in the dictionary, but should". The current "horse crisis" has produced a new sniglet.

Agrimanufactation (n) The creation of a fact or facts on the fly by the Department of Agriculture in order to support and unfounded claim or theory, or to cover a previously made false statement.

Southwest Blend

The folks from Southwest Blend Magazine were up for a look around the Comstock and the Virginia Range. The magazine has jumped to something like 1.8 million readers since it went from paper to on-line publication.

These folks literally travel all the world's outdoor places, including spending years studying the animals and landscape of Africa. Ergo they certainly aren't amateurs. They seemed quite satisfied with the condition of the range and its animals and could find no evidence of the range being "totally destroyed" as the Department of Agriculture claims.