Time to repeal and replace biggest taxpayer subsidy in NFL history

  • Paul Ryan unveiled a plan that will force Nevada to either come up with millions of dollars of its own or toss hundreds of thousands of people from health insurance coverage on the very same day that Bank of America graciously agreed to profit at the expense of Nevada taxpayers. To reiterate: The legislature’s approval of a stadium subsidy was asinine to begin with. But once Trump was elected and Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress, binding $750 million in taxing capacity for a football field was, in retrospect, a catastrophic blunder. What’s worse, the Clark County Commission gave its official seal of approval to the monstrosity after Trump was elected. There are a lot of reasons Steve Sisolak will never be governor, and this is one of them.
  • Some Republicans would like all the poor people to die now, while other Republicans suggest that in health care as in other areas the relentless assault on and oppression of low-income Americans should be indexed out over several years, over which time the party can continue its struggle to irreversibly and severely curtail the voting rights of people of color. Which is to say the specific horrors of Trump/GOP venality vis-à-vis health care and Nevada are bound to change as Republicans fight amongst themselves. But here’s a thing from the House plan unveiled Monday: “Currently, federal payments to states also take into account how generous the state’s benefits are and what rate it uses to pay providers. That means states like New York and Vermont get higher funding than states like Nevada and New Hampshire and those differences would be locked in for future years.” When it comes to the social safety net, you see, Nevada has always been cheap.
  • On the bright side (where I’m always looking), all those Nevadans who lose their health insurance because of Trump, Heller and Amodei will be able to afford those really crappy plans likely to re-flood the market when the ACA is repealed, because of all those stadium jobs that are minimum wage and part time and … oh never mind.
  • Remember when Nevada had an attorney general who sued people other than the federal government for things other than federal overreach? Or, as the New York Times put it in 2011: “…Ms. Masto contends that Bank of America raised interest rates on troubled borrowers when modifying their loans even though the bank had promised in the settlement to lower them. The bank also failed to provide loan modifications to qualified homeowners as required under the deal, improperly proceeded with foreclosures even as borrowers’ modification requests were pending and failed to meet the settlement’s 60-day requirement on granting new loan terms, instead allowing months and in some cases more than a year to go by with no resolution…” The economic projections for the stadium are dodgy at best and the project’s rationalization has consisted mostly of cheerleaders ignoring credible data, jumping up and down and yelling “We’re Special!” BofA doesn’t give a shit about any of that. No matter how big a flop the stadium is, BofA is going to get its profit. BofA knows a sucker when it sees one, and in Nevada elected officials of both parties who signed off on this, the bank sees several.