Friday, May 16, 2003 | 10:04 a.m.
Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.
ARE YOU SURE this is the road you would like to take?
How many of us would have loved for some wise person to have questioned us somewhere along the road of our lives and asked such a question? If for no other reason than to make us stop a moment and think about what we were doing and, perish the thought, what the ramifications of our actions might be.
Most of us don't get a second chance to avoid the mistakes for the first time. That is how we learn. It is also how we make some very big errors that sometimes cannot be fixed and lead, therefore, to consequences not intended, not foreseen and not conducive to civil society and democratic values. Methinks this afternoon there are a few such pathways which are not only less traveled but which are beckoning an unsuspecting public to travel down at their peril.
For example:
By now most people have learned about the Democratic Texas legislators who took to the hills -- more commonly referred to as Ardmore, Okla. -- rather than stay in Austin and let a Republican-dominated legislature ram home a distasteful redistricting plan that would assure a GOP advantage in the U.S. Congress for years to come.
Congressman Tom DeLay proved the long arm of a federal lawmaker could reach all the way back into Texas to diddle the Democrats in a way they preferred not to be diddled. What he didn't count on, though, was a creative reading of the laws of the Texas Legislature, which allowed those mis- sing from the action to put a stop to the chicanery. At least until the final bell would ring late Thursday night.
So the picture the country saw was of a group of lawmakers hiding out in Oklahoma and the Texas Republican Party doing all it could to bring them home. They issued arrest warrants, they used the entire state law enforcement apparatus to apprehend them and they painted signs calling them some very bad names. The governor of Oklahoma, seeing something particularly amusing in the Texas-style sideshow, refused to use his extraordinary powers to extradite the public officials, choosing instead to save them for the use they were intended -- like returning rapists and murderers home for trial, not lawmakers who happened to find a legal, albeit novel, way to avoid a political steamroller.
That's not the part of the story that should concern most people, however unorthodox it may appear. What should cause a chill to run through the spines of all Americans, especially those who consider themselves stalwart conservatives and defenders of the Constitution, is a story that ran in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Thursday that explained how the Texas Rangers found their man.
When the Homeland Security Department was created, the American public, always aware and concerned about abuses of our civil rights, were told that the resources of such an agency would never be used for domestic political purposes. The eradication of terrorism was its lofty goal and damned be he who would use such federal force against his own people.
Well, according to the news story, that's exactly what happened. The Air and Marine Interdiction Coordination Center in Riverside, Calif., was called into action by the leader of the Texas House and asked to track a Piper turboprop airplane. That apparently was the plane that took some of the legislators out of Texas and that was the plane which the Homeland Security Department officials tracked to Ardmore. At the request of and in pursuit of a domestic political agenda.
Now all this may sound like harmless activity high in entertainment value, but if true it represents a serious breach of the letter and spirit of the law intended to hunt down criminal terrorists, not one to be turned on citizens exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights. If we can use the full power of the federal government to help one partisan actor apprehend another, as it seems DeLay's raiders may have done, is it not too hard to imagine the circumstances by which our own government turns its full time and attention, not to mention our entire armed service and intelligence apparatus, against a handful of citizens exercising their legal right to disagree?
Where are the conservatives to protect us? What about the Libertarians? They are probably sniffing out clues in Ardmore because they don't seem to have a clue otherwise about how America works.
The other example of heading the wrong way has to be what the Nevada Legislature keeps doing in its single-minded effort to avoid making the kind of decision the vast majority of Nevadans want and expect them to make. Instead of supporting what Gov. Kenny Guinn has advanced as the proper tax policy for the future of this state, legislators keep dallying about, wasting time and hoping, I assume, that something magical might happen to take them off the hook.
Ignoring the reality of the fastest-growing state in the union growing its way into a hole so big we cannot possibly grow our way out of it has been commonplace for lawmakers for the past two decades. Now, a billion dollars upside down, the time has long passed that we can just push this problem off onto another Legislature for another time.
If these folks keep trying to pass Band-Aids instead of the sound tax policy that Gov. Guinn has asked for, there is a strong likelihood that he will call them into special session to stand up and be counted. I don't know how the public will react to that kind of activity because there may not be any precedent for such action.
To my knowledge, never has a public become outraged over a legislative decision not to raise taxes. But, in this case, it seems that the people are way ahead of the politicians. They know that money needs to be raised for education, health care and other legitimate purposes and they are for darned sure expecting their lawmakers to act accordingly.
That means taxing the "haves" rather than the "have nots" for the extra dough. The people understand the difference between taxing businesses -- which indirectly pass the cost on to customers -- and taxing the customers directly, which put a much heavier burden upon those who can least afford being tapped. So why don't the legislators get it?
If they insist on heading down what they think is an easy street, the lawmakers may find that the voters have a different idea about which road they should take. How about this time, people, taking the high road. Give the governor what he is asking for and what the people who elected him expect to get.
If a few big businesses and a greedy little newspaper don't like it here, there are 49 other states they can go to for solace in which they have taxes Nevada hasn't even begun to think about.
In a perfect world, Yogi Berra would point to a fork in the road to Nevada's future and tell the legislators to take it. In this not-so-perfect world, Gov. Guinn must show them the way. And we the people must hope they choose wisely. Lest we choose the way for them.
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