STREETALK

What is your favorite guilty music pleasure?

BY DAVID ROBERT

Church music. I love the old recordings of it. My dad used to record the organist at church for me. It was an old pre1930s organ. I like the sound of the organ, but I didn’t like the singing; they were always out of tune and off-key.

GUEST

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BY CHUCK MUTH

In the wake of the pandemic, more needs to be done to protect Nevada’s tourism industry

Nevada, the entertainment capital of the world, attracts millions of visitors each year. Last year, 38 million visitors generated more than $940 million in revenue—making tourism the lifeblood of our state’s economy.

The COVID-19 pandemic devastated Nevada, which in many ways is still struggling to get tourism back to prepandemic levels. While Nevada may not face another pandemic anytime soon, its economy is now threatened by a different virus: inflation.

Inflation is a tax on the working class. It eats away wages and drives up the cost of food, travel, transportation and energy. According to one analysis, inflation is impacting Nevada more than almost any other state.

The U.S. Census Bureau concluded that energy and food costs are the main drivers of the inflation spike; 47% of Nevada families are struggling to pay household expenses. Given the Nevada economy’s dependency on tourism and consumer spending, it’s important for state and federal decision-makers to resolve inflation’s strain on the state’s revenue and job growth.

Keeping travel costs down will prove critical to improving Nevada’s economic outlook. Lower prices will mean more travelers, and more travelers will mean more visitors, jobs and revenue.

Gov. Joe Lombardo has proposed several measures to ease inflation, including suspending the state’s gas tax, decreasing the modified business tax rate to 1.17 percent, and raising the threshold for businesses subject to the commerce tax. These policy initiatives would make it easier for Nevada businesses to provide tourists with the cheap goods and services they have come to know and expect.

The governor and Legislature should also work to boost the Nevada tourism industry by encouraging the U.S. Department of Justice to stop blocking new flights into and out of Harry Reid International Airport. For example, JetBlue has already announced that if the DOJ approves its acquisition of Spirit Airlines, it will have the scale it needs to expand its flight offerings so it can compete more effectively with the legacy airlines that keep ticket prices high.

That’s good news, because with airline ticket prices currently outpacing the rate of inflation by 25%, the high cost of airline tickets, more than anything else, is discouraging travel to the Silver State. A recent University of Nevada, Las Vegas, analysis predicts that prices may soon rise even more. Allowing more competition from JetBlue, which the Massachusetts Institute for Technology considers to be a proven cost-cutter, can mitigate this affordability crisis, significantly increasing Nevada’s tourist traffic.

Nevada’s senators should also continue proposing legislative measures that would force the U.S. Department of Transportation to take boosting travel and tourism into account when making key infrastructure decisions.

For far too long, the needs of tourism-heavy states like Nevada have gone unrecognized in the government’s internal improvement talks. As a result, many of the Silver State’s roadways are unequipped to handle the millions of visitors it receives annually. This affects everything from commerce to commutes, and it’s long past due for the state’s federal policymakers to fix this unmistakable public policy oversight.

Chuck Muth is president and CEO of Citizen Outreach and a professional political adviser. He also is a former executive director of the American Conservative Union.

Nerdcore. It’s like nerdy hip hop, Dungeons and Dragons, nerdy techno. It’s funny as hell with very clever lyrics and great beats. It’s so under the radar and obscure. It’s so obscure that I have to turn friends on to it. MC Frontalot is one of my favorites. He’s the godfather of nerdcore.

The Thompson Twins. It brings back memories from my past. Everything they sing about is true to every relationship. It’s like you’ve been through so much and still want to hold on. Some people say that it doesn’t make any sense, but I think it does. Why wouldn’t I like it?

The Sweet, the old glam band, classic glam rock; not many people know of them. I used to blast it on cassette in my buddy’s old ’68 Olds back in high school. It’s nostalgic for me. Hanging out with punks, they wouldn’t get it. The Sweet had long hair, wore makeup, and wore platform heels and silky pants.

Rush. I grew up on Rush and still like them. I’ve told people that I like Rush, and they have said, “Why?” They think Rush is overplayed and that they’re a guys’ band and that the concerts are a “sausage fest” with guys with long hair and flannel shirts. They look different than a Britney Spears crowd. I’m in my 50s now; who cares?

| BY SHEILA LESLIE