The governor’s press office announced yesterday that Gov. Jim Gibbons had jumped into the podcasting craze and linked folks to the first one. It was so painful to watch I hesitate to tell you where to find it.
Oh, and as it turns out, it isn’t even a real “podcast,” as Steve Friess explains HERE
And apparently the person who shot the video (not a podcast) never heard of using a wireless microphone and slept through “Lighting Basics” in Video Production 101. It’s clear from the shadows under the guv’s chin that the key light was placed above and behind the governor’s head, resulting in his eyes looking like empty black sockets – kinda like the Grim Reaper himself.
Oh, all right. See it HERE if you must.
The message itself was, to say the least, uninspiring and uninformative. There was nothing new in it – although there was a bit of new parsing of an old spin. “I have submitted a budget that does not raise taxes on hard-working Nevadans and/or businesses who are already struggling to make ends meet,” the governor declares.
Well, at the risk of beating a dead horse, two points…
1.) While the governor claims he isn’t raising taxes on hard-working Nevadans and/or businesses (yet), he HAS proposed a whopping $282 million tax hike on Nevada’s hard-working tourists who are already struggling to make ends meet. A lie of omission is still a lie.
2.) The promise Gibbons made to the voters of Nevada was that he would “oppose and veto any and all efforts to increase taxes.” That includes raising taxes on tourists. Period. End of discussion. Exclamation point.
Later in what pretty much resembles a bad hostage video, the governor also says the following (with a straight face): “And folks now, more than ever, I will stick to my no new taxes promise. The main reason is new taxes will kill jobs.”
Again, the governor is simply lying his donkey off here. He isn’t sticking with his “no new taxes promise.” He’s already broken it! And if raising taxes on businesses would kill jobs, what in the world does he think raising taxes on tourists is gonna do? SPUR tourism? Gimme a break.
If the governor would just come clean and stop trying to spin and lie his way out of the fact that he broke his campaign promise, maybe I’d be able to stop pointing it out.
