Do politicians and business leaders ever stop to consider what’s coming out of their mouths?  Don’t they know that every politico, everywhere, runs under the banner of ‘economic diversification’?

In Nevada, lot of pie-in-the-sky ideas from high-speed rail to billboard wars with California haven’t produced a whole lot other than adding to the hot air in the deserts of southern Nevada, have they?

Here Nevada sits, right next door to the 6^th largest economy on the planet, and our state has never been able to capitalize on that seeming advantage, have we?

At least 40 years of promises, and still, every neighboring state is beating the pants off of us economically.

Why is that?

It is infrastructure and quality of life issues that convinced California businesses that despite our low regulations and low taxes; Nevada is a Third World country and an exceptionally poor place to do business in.

Geographic location and taxes aren’t nearly enough despite what the Las Vegas Review-Journal states ad nauseum.

Oh sure, we’ve attracted some low wage, low end, dead end, service-type of jobs, but those businesses are leaches sucking what little resources there are here and care not-at-all about the communities they’re in; that’s why we’re #2 in the nation in unemployment.

It might surprise you that though taxes and regulations are a concern to businesses, they both rank far below two things that all major businesses consider when expanding or relocating that automatically fails Nevada right out of the gate: cheap power and transportation infrastructure.

I bring this up because our highly taxed, highly regulated neighbor to the west is addressing the cheaper power concerns by passing a law that will encourage businesses to stay in California and participate in power generation instead of building massive grid systems, anti-environmental solar farms and such, like Nevada is considering.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-solar13-2009oct13,0,4863318.story

Here in Nevada, no such rooftop, full-throttled effort can ever succeed because NVEnergy doesn’t want it and would rather buy from neighboring states, than ever see customers’ power meter going backward and having to pay individual homeowners and commercial businesses to generate local power, thus freeing up our generation capacity for new, bigger businesses and industries that need it.

They want to solely control the taxpayer-subsidized solar farm efforts too; NVEnergy is anything but a partner in economic expansion and diversity in Nevada. They firmly reject rooftops only for their bottom-line instead of considering on how to capitalize on it.

They are the power providing monopoly that controls the entire state’s economy and that’s just dandy with our political leaders because NVEnergy buys their silence and inaction with big donations to both parties.

We can’t even build much needed power generation plants in White Pine county, or anywhere else, so scratch California businesses that need dependable power to operate; they’re never coming here.

Then there are our highways, railroads, and airports; the Moe, Curly, and Larry’s of not only of our state; but of our competitive nation.  We are decades behind even the most backward states in these very basics for business.

The recent TRIPnet.org report from DC didn’t go far enough in its scathing assessment of our state’s infrastructure needs.

http://www.lvrj.com/news/report-calls-for-better-upkeep-of-state-roads-64197832.html

A road trip between Nevada’s two biggest population centers of Reno and Las Vegas is reminiscent of the pioneer days of Conestoga wagons.  No direct Interstate and rail connection between the two cities is costly to business and a stunning, major, long term planning failure.

Try profitably running a truck filled with three trailers of goods on that archaic road route.

Nevada remains the only state of the lower 48 that does not have a direct Interstate connection between it’s two largest population centers!

No one seems to care, or notice in Nevada, except the businesses that may have considered moving here.

We’re 30 years late in building the Interstate connection to Phoenix from Las Vegas, but at least that’s starting to become a reality; again, 30 years after it should have been completed!

But the biggest deficiency that cripples our state’s ability to compete regionally and make us the place, especially for California and western region economic entities and concerns, is evident on any road atlas.  Open one up and see the big gaping hole in the Interstate Highway System and railroad right-of-way between Boise Idaho and Phoenix Arizona that leaves Nevada completely out of the running for business opportunities that require access to both modes to compete in a dynamic global economy.

Our economic advantage is that Nevada is unique in the whole country in that our state would provide what’s called a ‘dry-lane’ for both road and rail transit that would link mining, agricultural, manufacturing, and the seaports of the Northwest, through our state, to the markets of Arizona, Southern California, Texas, and the Gulf of Mexico; the cheapest ports in the country are in the Gulf region, and road and rail access to them is paramount to economic activity in all the states that goods traverse through.

Currently, they completely bypass Nevada.

It is a ‘dry-lane’ in that moisture from the Pacific is largely dumped in the Sierras and the Cascades, making whatever falls to the east over Nevada until it gets to the Western Front of the Rockies, drier and much easier to manage for road and rail transportation equipment.

Currently to the north, transportation has to travel the dangerous and snowy I-80 road/rail corridor though Colorado, or from the south through super-congested southern California; there is no northwest to southeast road/rail alternative that would greatly benefit Nevada, and that means there is no economic activity for Nevada either. A giant rail head and Interstate junction in the Wells/Elko area would ignite that region; and a north/south Interstate from Boise to Phoenix would make Nevada a natural choice for all the concerns that would benefit from being located in our state.

A separate road/rail link would greatly expedite transit between Nevada’s two largest cities too.

Presently, no one is even considering either undertaking.

Finally, there is the economically retarded way we run the state’s two major airports in Reno and Las Vegas. Where any cargo air carrier currently landing in California would be very interested in alternatives to San Francisco and Los Angeles; neither Nevada city seem to have any interest, much less knowledge about this.  California’s enormous fuel taxes, landing fees, outrageous labor costs and stifling union rules, and storage costs of goods, make Nevada a natural alternative given that both of our major cities can easily and economically service both California metropolitan areas.

However, we will not budge on our fuel taxes and landing fees in Nevada, will not extend runways to handle giant cargo jets when doing both, especially in Reno, and would invite every international carrier to consider us over our neighbors to the west.

No one in the state is pursuing it, or offering incentives toward it, and you have to wonder why, given the fuel taxes alone to fully fuel a 747 in California has all air-freighters looking for viable options today; every penny of increase in fuel costs is also that much more in fuel taxes paid in California.

Currently, Nevada has two daily international round-trips to London on Virgin & BA who carry little air freight here, and one scheduled weekly flight on air-cargo giant Korean Air, the world’s largest passenger/cargo carrier by volume, and we’re doing nothing to entice them to come here to either airport with more service into Nevada.

Absolutely nothing.

Korean Air’s parent also owns one of the world’s largest steamship & container lines, Hanjin, and always looks for opportunities to enhance all of their businesses together. Wouldn’t that rail head in Elko, and the 100 mile rail spur line in far southern Nevada be a perfect opportunity to develop with them?

Can you imagine the economic buzz if we were able to put a deal together with them to have their North American air freight operations in the Reno region, for instance; can you imagine all the South Korean business concerns building their warehouse and truck fleets in northern Nevada?

How about Hanjin’s entire Los Angeles/Long Beach operations moved to convenient and far cheaper, far southern Nevada with the new road/rail spur to Arizona’s I-40 corridor?

But why should the air-cargo carriers or steamship lines be interested if we’re not? You have to pursue these things, they just don’t magically occur as the Review-Journal seems to think they do because we have low taxes and low regulations.

And by this economic myopia that insists on continuing our tourist-centric economy by building thrill-ride, high-speed trains to nowhere, instead of laying the state’s broader economic infrastructure foundations, we’ll continue to remain America’s economic Third World with the Review-Journal and others acting as one hand applauding our state’s continued stagnation and complete lack of diversification.

Maybe someone will cast them aside one day and begin the real pursuit of lifting our state out of our one-industry abyss toward true economic diversification

That takes action, not talk; 40 years of talk is 40 years too long, isn’t it?

Mike Zahara
10172009
www.WatchDogWag.com