(Fred Weinberg) – I read a story in the Las Vegas Review Journal (actually, on my iPad) this morning, which is symptomatic of government everywhere.
Before I tell you the story, let me start with one of my own.
18 years ago, we sold our radio stations in Oklahoma. Back then, we had a regular caller named Jack Jackson (he passed on a few years ago) who used to tell us that when someone got elected to something—city council, county commission, school board—they would go on down to the city hall, the county courthouse or the school board building, see that ten button phone, the receptionist and take a whiff of that pink gas and they were never the same…
Old Jack (and he was the quintessential good old boy) may be gone, but the concept lives on and they must pump that pink gas into the Nevada state legislature building by the trainload.
It seems that the number of marriage licenses issued by the Clark County Clerk in Las Vegas has taken a nose dive. The number of marriage licenses issued in Clark County has plunged 37 percent over the last decade. Last year 80,738 marriage licenses were issued, down from 128,250 in 2004.
So do you know what solution now announced Congressional Candidate state Sen. Ruben Kihuen has proposed?
This moron wants to RAISE THE COST OF A MARRIAGE LICENSE TO $77 and use the money to promote weddings in Las Vegas! (By way of contrast, you can get the same license in Reno for $10.)
And, when he’s done with stupidity like that, he wants to be a Congressman, if he grows up.
He’s introduced a bill which would allow the Clark County Clerk to raise the fee for a marriage license to $77 and use the additional $14 for, say, R&R Advertising, to develop a campaign with an Elvis Impersonator finishing a drive through wedding and then telling the happy couple they could now go do embarrassing things because what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas except for the fact that they’re married now.
Or, something like that.
Here’s the legislative attitude. We have a problem. Fewer people want to get married in Las Vegas anymore.
So the obvious solution is let’s make it more expensive and throw money at the problem. That’s a sure solution, right? Just like the way morons like Kihuen and bunch of RINOs think they can fix the schools.
These clowns didn’t just take a whiff of that pink gas.
They must have found and fracked a well under the legislature and are mainlining the stuff.
Just for the record, when my wife and I were living in Las Vegas and decided to get married, we went to Hawaii. It costs $60 for a license there and is not nearly as trashy as Las Vegas.
If you actually live in Las Vegas (and that’s about 2,000,000 people these days) you might not want to pay more for a marriage license than you would pay in a place like Honolulu and you might go somewhere else.
I wonder if the geniuses at the legislature have thought of that.
Mr. Weinberg is publisher of the Penny Press. Get to know more about him by visiting www.PennyPressNV.com.