Who needs the 'Megabucks'?

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Tue, 26 Jun 2001 13:21:52 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED JUNE 26, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Who needs the 'Megabucks'?

Here in Las Vegas, Dale Askew has served as Clark County manager for four years. He's never held favor with all seven elected commissioners. Finally tired of trying to serve so many masters, Mr. Askew this week retired with some dignity and grace, and was quickly replaced by unanimous commission vote with UNLV government professor and former county administrator Thom Reilly.

At the time of his departure, Mr. Askew was drawing a comfortable salary of $156,418. Based on that salary, a county spokesman says he could have expected to draw a pension of $65,000 per year.

Mr. Askew is 56 years old and in good health, so far as is known. This is not an old sailor being set ashore with ravaged health and a peg leg. Mr. Askew should have little trouble finding gainful employment with any number of lobbying or consulting firms should he so desire. He could even, presumably, take up Thom Reilly's newly vacated post at the university, if he do desired.

And even should he take to his rocking chair, many are the Clark County residents who'd be happy to live on $65,000 per year and never have to drive to work again.

(As one letter-writer put it this week, adding in Mr. Askew's 14 years of experience in junior posts, "I served 30 years in the U. S. Air Force, flew tours of combat in two wars, was subjected to isolated tours of duty, long separations from my family, lived in primitive, austere surroundings and witnessed many of my comrades killed and others taken prisoner. My pension is barely half of what Mr. Askew will receive for having served 18 years in air conditioned comfort, safely ensconced in the county office building.")

Yet even that pension was not enough for the very county commissioners who have been maneuvering for years to get Mr. Askew out. Oh no. Instead, the commissioners voted Tuesday to make an additional $178,000 payment of taxpayer funds into the Public Employees Retirement System on Mr. Askew's behalf, "buying" him three years more seniority on his pension, as a result of which he will receive an annual old-age retirement check of not $65,000, but $78,000.

Should Mr. Askew draw that pension until he's 75, he will net an extra $247,000.

Is that some great bargain? Would any local banker have trouble turning $178,000 into $247,000 over the next 19 years? More importantly, why do the county commissioners keep doing this? Would they really like the motto "Hey, what the hell, it's only TAX money" carved in stone above the entrance to the grandiose, custom-designed auditorium where theyn now conduct their business?

Some may respond that this only mimics the buy-out Mr. Askew might have received if he'd taken advantage of the early retirement plan the county has been offering certain employees in recent years, supposedly in hopes of replacing highly-paid senior staff with lower-paid replacements.

But that offer never applied to Mr. Askew. There's no evidence he couldn't have been gotten rid of without the promise of such a payoff. And most of all -- even assuming Mr. Reilly will keep his new job for seven years -- it would be necessary to pay the new county manager an average of no more than $131,000 over the next seven years ($25,000 less or year than Mr. Askew's current salary) in order to save $178,000 ... which (given all those automatic COLAs and longevity pay hikes) would probably mean starting the new county manager at less than $100,000.

What are the chances?

The Clark County Commission has just stolen an unauthorized $178,000 from the taxpayers -- a clear violation of their fiduciary duty -- to retire in the lap of luxury a county bureaucrat they didn't even like. What on earth will they do if a county manager they like ever retires -- just open the windows and start dumping buckets of cash into the amphitheater?

As another letter writer correctly put it this week, "It sure is nice to be able to give away money when it is not your own. I only hope people will remember when it's election time."

Finally, the minority of commissioners who complained about Mr. Reilly's being hired on the "good old boy" system, without benefit of any formal search or interview process, got that one right.

"It is a disservice to Mr. Reilly," commented Bruce Woodbury, who has now been a county commissioner for longer than anyone else in local history. "It's a disservice to those of us who were not consulted, and to the community, to not open this up to others to apply. I don't think that it is good government."

Mr. Woodbury was right to object, as were Yvonne Atkinson Gates and freshman Chip Maxfield. So why on earth didn't they all vote "No," instead of going along and "making it unanimous"?

It's allowed, you know.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $72 to Privacy Alert, 1475 Terminal Way, Suite E for Easy, Reno, NV 89502 -- or dialing 775-348-8591. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at 1-800-244-2224, or via web site www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair