Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Ours to Make

Let's just get this out of the way now: Outgoing Assembly Member & current Lt. Governor candidate Lucy Flores (D) kicked @ss on "Ralston Reports" last night. She drove the narrative. She generally answered Ralston's questions in the best way possible. And she came off far more polished than the two other candidates running in the other major party's primary for this race.

Yet with all this being said, there was one moment that gave many progressives at least a little heartburn. Of course, that was when Lucy Flores proposed an alternative to The Education Initiative (TEI). She said she has problems with TEI...

And she's not alone. Many state legislators do. Yet when it was in the Legislature last year, none of them proposed an alternative... Until it was too late. And even then, that supposed alternative was still very half-baked.

So now, the choice is this: TEI or nothing. And the choice is not Lucy Flores' to make for us. In fact, the choice is no longer in any one legislator's hands. It's now in our hands. The choice is now ours to make.

For years, this issue has been studied. Eventually, it became studied to death. We know our schools are "grossly underfunded". We know our business climate does suffer due to our gross underfunding of public education. We know our 19th century tax system is in dire need of 21st century reforms. And we know our Legislature has dragged its feet on tax reform for far too long, as it's only succeeded in delivering broken promises of reform.

This is why TEI happened. And this is why TEI will be on our ballot this fall. After seeing the same cycle of FAIL spin around for far too long, many thousands of Nevada citizens decided enough was enough. These citizens decided to break the cycle of #NVLeg #nved #FAIL by turning the decision of tax reform to "We the People" to make.

We're sick & tired of too late & half-baked alleged "alternatives". We're sick & tired of absurd straw men standing in the way of reform. And we're sick & tired of the long string of broken promises from Carson City. We're sick & tired of waiting for reform. TEI is now here, and it's the only tangible option for real reform now.

While we understand why Lucy Flores, Jon Ralston, and various other politicians & pundits have problems with TEI, we also recognize that the decision of long awaited & badly needed tax reform is no longer solely theirs to make. It's now ours to make. It's either TEI or nothing, and that decision will be made by all of us later this year.

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