During a stop in Elko, Nevada last week, presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) said that he opposes the federal ownership of any public lands.  After stating that he wanted to disband the U.S. Department of Interior (which manages 500 million acres of surface land including nearly 400 national parks), he responded to a question about a travel management plan in a national forest by stating:

Paul:  I want as much federal land to be turned over to the state as possible—the regulatory approach to tell people how to do and what to say.  So I was essentially other than the other members of Congress from this state — I very early on opposed the dumping of nuclear waste in Nevada, so I want the state to make a decision—

Questioner:  This plan pertains to using ATVs and things like that on federal land.

Paul:  Well, I’d be opposed to that.  I don’t want the federal government dictating to Nevada, period.  I’d rather see the land owned and controlled by the states.

Watch it:

This is not the first time Paul has called for public lands to be turned over to states or private entities.  In October he told the Western Republican Leadership Conference that public lands “should be returned to the states and then for the best parts sold off to private owners.”

The existence of public lands managed by the federal government is actually provided for in the Property Clause of the Constitution which states: “Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States, and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.”

Our federal public lands are important assets for many reasons.  Interior Department lands alone provided $363 billion in economic activity in 2010, some of which goes to states and counties.  Indeed federal lands in Nevada pumped $1 billion into the state’s economy in 2010.

Additionally, public lands are managed for the public good.   They are owned by every single American, and are places we all can go to picnic, hike, fish, and get outside with our families.  They also provide important benefits like clean air and clean water.

Perhaps most importantly, public lands are protected so they can be enjoyed for future generations.  Just imagine what the Grand Canyon would have been like if mining interests and the Arizona Territory had had their way in 1903 and mined it rather than preserved it.

But not former New Hampshire governor John Sununu. The Romney campaign surrogate appeared on MSNBC this morning and offered a novel interpretation of the low figures:

SUNUNU: In an odd sense when turnout is down, contrary to what you are hearing, people are satisfied with the winning and the candidate that’s winning. They are satisfied with Mitt Romney.

Watch it:

In fact, a new poll out today shows that the more voters are learning about Romney, the less they like him.

Nevada Republican Party Chairwoman Amy Tarkanian initially predicted as many as 70,000 Nevadans would participate in this year’s caucus, but final results show that fewer than half as many actually turned out. The 33,000 figure is not only lower than expectations, but more than 10,000 fewer than participated in Nevada’s caucus in 2008. And even though Romney topped 50 percent of the vote for the first time in this primary season in the sate, his vote total was more than 25 percent lower than it was in 2008, and his percentage of the vote fell slightly as well.

The results in Nevada mark the third Republican primary so far where turnout has been below 2008 levels. In a year where Republicans are counting on high enthusiasm to defeat President Obama, that’s not a good sign for the eventual nominee. In Florida, turnout dipped 14 percent, and in New Hampshire, which has an open primary, turnout among registered Republicans fell 16 percent:

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R), for instance, told Nevadans that they shouldn’t try to stop the foreclosure process in October, a statement that earned a strong rebuke from Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) and other state Republicans. After seemingly changing his position on housing in Florida, another state that has been ravaged by foreclosures and falling home prices, Romney has mostly avoided the subject since coming to Nevada.

Letting “markets work,” however, isn’t likely to help the Nevadans who are struggling to deal with falling home prices, high foreclosure rates, and underwater mortgages. With that in mind, here’s a look at just how hard the housing crisis has hit the state:

60: Consecutive months that Nevada has led the nation in foreclosures.

177: One in every 177 Nevada homes was in foreclosure in December 2011. Nationally, 1 of every 634 homes is in foreclosure.

58: Percent of Nevada homeowners that are underwater — meaning they owe more than their home is worth. The national average is 22.1 percent.

10.6: Percent drop in Nevada home prices in 2011, the second-worst rate in the nation.

167,000: Number of vacant Nevada homes. The rate of vacancies, about 1-in-7, has doubled since 2000.

1: Las Vegas’ rank among the worst cities for foreclosures. One of every 150 Las Vegas homes is in foreclosure, the highest rate in the nation. Two-thirds of the city’s homeowners are underwater.

9.1: Percent drop in Las Vegas home values since November 2010, the second-worst performance of the 20 cities surveyed by Case Shiller and Standard & Poor’s.

70: Percent of homes in foreclosure in one Summerlin, Nevada ZIP code, according to local real estate agents.

89031: The North Las Vegas ZIP code that is the worst in the nation for foreclosures. The five worst ZIP codes for foreclosures are all in Las Vegas.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney likes to sing about America the beautiful, but he mainly seems interested in mining it.

In an interview with the editorial board of the Reno Gazette-Journal last night, Mitt Romney expressed his ignorance of why the United States owns and manages approximately 80 percent of Nevada‘s land, most of it uninhabitable mountains and desert.  In response to a question about whether he would sell public lands back to the state, Romney stated that that “I haven’t studied it, what the purpose is of the land”:

I don’t know the reason that the federal government owns such a large share of Nevada.  And when I was in Utah at the Olympics there I heard a similar refrain there.  What they were concerned about was that the government would step in and say, “We’re taking this” — which by the way has extraordinary coal reserves — “and we’re not going to let you develop these coal reserves.”  I mean, it drove the people nuts.  Unless there’s a valid, and legitimate, and compelling governmental purpose, I don’t know why the government owns so much of this land. 

So I haven’t studied it, what the purpose is of the land, so I don’t want to say, “Oh, I’m about to hand it over.” But where government ownership of land is designed to satisfy, let’s say, the most extreme environmentalists, from keeping a population from developing their coal, their gold, their other resources for the benefit of the state, I would find that to be unacceptable.

Romney’s statement stands in stark contrast to the conservative tradition of knowing the value of protecting the lands that belong to all of us places for future generations. Teddy Roosevelt, the great Republican conservationist, once said, “Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation.”

Public lands in Nevada – and other western states—actually provide an enormous economic boost and sustain hundreds of thousands of jobs.  Indeed, recent Interior Department statistics show that federally managed public lands in Nevada provided over $1 billion in economic impacts and supported 13,311 jobs in 2010 (and this statistic doesn’t even include the economic impacts of Forest Service lands, managed by the Department of Agriculture).  Recreation, energy and minerals, and grazing and timber all play a part in the economic effects that public lands provide to Nevada.  Activities like skiing at Lake Tahoe, boating at Lake Mead, and hiking at Great Basin National Park all take place on public lands.

Even Romney himself once mentioned on the campaign trail that when on vacations with his family when he was young “we went from national park to national park.  And they [my parents] were teaching me to fall in love with America.”

He might want to have a better answer about the purpose and value of public lands before he arrives in Colorado tomorrow.  A recent poll from the Colorado College State of the Rockies Project found that 93 percent of Colorado voters agreed that “Our national parks, forests, monuments, and wildlife areas are an essential part of Colorado’s economy.”

Romney, who's owned several mansions, has trouble grasping the foreclosure crisis.

On Tuesday, the GOP presidential contenders squared off for a debate in Nevada, the state with both the highest unemployment and highest foreclosure rates in the country. More than 80 percent of Nevada homeowners are underwater, owing more on their mortgage than their home is worth.

But before the debate, Mitt Romney told the Las Vegas Review Journal that he doesn’t have a plan to help homeowners struggling to keep their homes. Government, he said, should not “try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom.”

As ThinkProgress noted earlier, Gov.Brian Sandoval (R-NV) said that Romney doesn’t “fully understand” what’s happening in Nevada. And he’s not alone amongst the state’s Republican lawmakers in hastily trying to distance himself from Romney’s toxic position:

In a state where the loss of a family home perhaps has been the most painful outcome of the stressed economy, Mitt Romney took hits Tuesday from Nevada leaders of both parties after commenting that the government should let the foreclosure process “run its course and hit the bottom.”[...]

Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., distanced himself from the Republican presidential contender.

“Senator Heller does not agree with Mitt Romney,” spokesman Stewart Bybee said. “His plan could take up to six to eight years for recovery, and that is time that Nevada just does not have.”

Rep. Joe Heck (R-NV) seemed to be the only Republican who did not completely repudiate Romney’s position. A Romney endorser, Heck thinks the housing market “does need to reach bottom,” according to a spokesman, but supports “a soft landing rather than a hard crash” by having the government continue to offer refinancing help.

Nevada has had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation for 56 consecutive months. In September, 9,622 properties were in foreclosed upon — a rate of one foreclosure for every 118 homes.

Yet when Romney unveiled his economic plan in Nevada in September, he did not make a single mention of the housing crisis. The New York Times reported just this week that the collapse of housing prices is a major impediment to economic recovery that continues to undermine consumer confidence.

Romney, a multimillionaire and former corporate executive who’s owned several lavish properties across the country, may have trouble grasping the plight of average Americans who are struggling to stay in their homes. In August, Romney applied for a permit to quadruple the size of his 3,000-square-foot, $12 million home in La Jolla, California. A campaign official explained that the mansion was too small and “inadequate for their needs.”

At a conference for Western Republicans in Las Vegas this week, GOP governors had varied reactions to Alabama’s radical anti-immigration law. Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ), who signed Arizona’s infamous SB17070 law, told ThinkProgress that she would like to implement the Alabama model, which goes further than her state by targeting school children and even making it illegal for undocumented immigrants to get water in their homes.

Gov. Brian Sandoval (R-NV), however, said Alabama’s law would not be right for his state:

KEYES: What about Alabama’s immigration law?

SANDOVAL: That’s in litigation right now, so–

KEYES: Is that something you see as a model that Nevada might be able to use?

SANDOVAL: I don’t. I don’t.

KEYES: You don’t think it’d be appropriate?

SANDOVAL: I don’t see it as being a model.

Watch it:

Nevada and Arizona are both states with a large immigrant population. The two divergent policy positions between Brewer and Sandoval highlights the larger schism in the Republican Party in terms of immigration and the Hispanic population.

Despite a federal court blocking parts of the Alabama law for now, including the schools provision, hundreds of Hispanic children have refused to show up at school and many families are fleeing the state.

While former Speaker Newt Gingrich said Yucca was a good location for it, former Gov. Mitt Romney said it was a states’ rights issue. “If Nevada says, ‘Look, we don’t want it,’ then let other states make bids and say, ‘Look, we’ll take it,’” he said.

And for once, Texas Gov. Rick Perry acknowledged that he agreed with Romney’s position:

“From time to time Mitt and I don’t agree, but on this one he’s hit the nail on the head,” Perry said.

“Allow the states to make the decision,” Perry added. “And some state out there will see the economic issue and they will have it in their state.”

Now Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), who has endorsed Perry, is hoping that Perry will join him in supporting the Yucca Mountain project, which Nevadans strongly oppose:

Inhofe told reporters outside the Capitol Wednesday that he hopes to speak with the Perry camp on the matter.

“I am looking forward to that conversation,” Inhofe said. Inhofe also said he did not believe the question about Yucca was asked fairly in the debate.

“I think you will see a more modified answer next time,” Inhofe said.

The Obama administration has backed away from the Yucca Mountain proposal, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has consistently opposed the plan.

And during the GOP debate, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) also said he approached the issue from a states’ rights perspective, but he reached a different conclusion than Romney and Perry: “What right does 49 states have to punish one state and say we’re going to put our garbage in your state? [...] I think that’s wrong.”

Groups of westerners in California, Nevada, and New Mexico recently staged events to call for an end to government handouts to Big Oil. These activities come as discussion of oil subsidies as a potential source of revenue for the country heats up. The newly-created Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, also known as the “super-committee,” had its first meeting last week, and ending oil subsidies could be on the table. Additionally, President Obama’s American Jobs Act includes the elimination of oil and tax breaks as an important pay-for measure.

Activists focused their attention on elected officials in Congress, who have the power to eliminate subsidies to profitable oil companies. As an organizer in a video courtesy of Progress Now Nevada put it:

We’re here today to send a message to Nevada Senator Dean Heller and anyone else in Congress that thinks it’s a good idea to give billions of dollars in tax breaks to these huge oil and gas corporations at the expense of Nevada seniors. So take action today and tell Senator Dean Heller it’s time to stop giving away the store to big oil and gas and it’s time to start protecting Nevada seniors.

Watch it:

Activists have employed a variety of tactics to get their message across to members of Congress and educate the public. Nevadans put up a billboard on a well-traveled highway between Reno and Carson City. Demonstrators in California held a rally at a local gas station and attended a town hall meeting for Representative Tom McClintock (R-CA) carrying their anti-subsidies message. And New Mexicans highlighted the work of Representative Martin Heinrich (D-NM) on oil and gas as a “voice of reason” in Washington and urged other members of Congress to speak out too.

The work of these citizens builds on the success of other events in Montana and Colorado this summer. The overall sentiment that Big Oil companies should pay their fair share is supported by national polling, which found that 74% of Americans support ending subsidies to oil and gas.

The Big Five oil companies raked in $67 billion in just the first half of this year. As Congressman John Garamendi said in a statement supporting a rally in his district, “I believe it is foolish to find savings as some have proposed – by ending commonsense environmental regulations, by cutting Medicare and Social Security benefits, by laying off teachers, by cutting off funds to needed infrastructure – when we can easily save $44 billion right now by ending wasteful subsidies to Big Oil.”

The commercial, which follows in the footsteps of China-bashing ads run by Citizens Against Government Waste and former Rep. Zack Space, depicts a Chinese news anchor in the near-future discussing the U.S. decline in the face of China’s imperial aspirations. “Their President Obama just kept raising the debt limit, and their independence became a new dependence. As their debt grew, our fortune grew, and that is how our great empire rose again,” she reports.

Running in the background are shots of Obama bowing to Chinese president Hu Jintao and a doctored image of the Chinese army marching with automatic rifles in front of the U.S. Capitol building as it flies the red Chinese flag. At its close, the ad cuts to an image of Amodei as he promises to “never vote to raise Obama’s debt limit and risk our independence.” Watch it:

Hyperbolic claims that U.S. independence is at risk from China’s increased ownership of the public debt is a thinly veiled attempt to play on some Americans’ xenophobia. At the end of the 2010 fiscal year, China owned just 9.5 percent of U.S. debt. But not only does Amodei ignore the facts regarding the national debt, the ad’s leap from the national debt ceiling to Chinese troops marching in front of the Capitol is simply preposterous.

But this fear-mongering may not be enough to save Amodei’s campaign once the debate focuses on his support for the GOP plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system.

– Sarah Bufkin

Heller was appointed by Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) in a seemingly political move designed to give Heller the advantage of incumbency in upcoming primary and general elections for the Senate seat. Sandoval thwarted Democratic efforts to make the process of replacing Ensign more transparent and has thrown the state into chaos as Nevada prepares to hold its first ever special election to fill Heller’s seat in the 2nd congressional district.

In most respects, Heller is a cookie-cutter conservative. A side-by-side comparison of Heller and Ensign’s records reveals that both men scored as more conservative than three-fourths of the House and Senate, respectively. However, in some ways Heller may be even more extreme than his predecessor, especially since he has tried to appease members of the Tea Party in the past year. A review of some of Heller’s eyebrow-raising moments:

- Heller recently said he was “proud to be the only member of Congress who will get to vote” against Medicaid twice – once in the House and again in the Senate.

– Heller was among the 130 Republicans who wanted to end birthright citizenship. 

– He once claimed unemployment benefits are creating “hobos.”

– In 2004, he said “John Kerry changes his position more often than a Nevada prostitute.”

– In 2007, Heller voted against the SCHIP bill, denying health care coverage to 4 million children.

– In contrast to Ensign, Heller voted to uphold “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to continue barring gays from serving in the military.

– Heller voted against the Troubled Asset Relief Program of 2008, while Ensign voted for it.

It’s an exaggeration to say, as one publication did, that Heller makes “Ensign look like Dennis Kucinich,” but it’s clear that the ultraconservative certainly won’t be a moderating influence on the Senate.

In her correspondence to the sheriff, Matson wrote that her staff and the public “can plainly see that the construction employees are all Mexican/Latino non-English speaking and I’m getting complaints.” Matson went on to say, “When I worked for Pardee Homes in San Diego that got fined for using illegals millions of dollars because of the shabby construction work, illegals can’t read blueprints, duh! let alone any other important construction instructions. I could go on and on…..but I need to go to work.”

The county assessor’s criticism wasn’t limited to immigrant construction workers. “I would never have a uneducated illegal hater of Americans watch my children or clean my house, they can’t read and have no idea what directions are listed on cleaning supplies, that’s just one example,” wrote Matson.

Nye County Sheriff Tony DeMeo responded that he has “no legal reason to investigate the workers’ status.” “That’s what we call racial profiling,” DeMeo told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “I’m in favor of supporting the Constitution,” DeMeo said. “People (like Matson) want to wrap themselves in the flag but they don’t think the law should apply to anyone but them.” Commissioner Joni Eastley publicly scolded Matson, stating, “Your racially charged and insensitive comments were wholly inappropriate and volatile and they were sent under the seal of Nye County…We don’t tolerate racists.”

Although utterly reprehensible, Matson’s comments pale in comparison to recent remarks made by other local Republican elected officials across the country. From the Kansas state Representative who said we should shoot immigrants like “wild swine,” to the Alabama state Senator who advised Republicans to “empty the clip, and do what has to be done” to stop immigrants from “destroying” his community, hate speech against immigrants is unfortunately nothing new in mainstream politics.

The Nye County commissioners “could do little more than issue a public reprimand” because Matson is an elected official. Matson is reportedly “unapologetic.” However, the five county commissioners who unanimously agreed to stand up against Matson’s troubling remarks should set a precedent that will hopefully be followed in Kansas where over 55,000 people have signed on to a petition seeking the resignation of state Rep. Virgil Peck (R).

For starters, legal prostitution, which occurs only within the highly regulated brothels, is not a big contributor to Nevada’s economy one way or another, despite the outsize attention it gets. State law allows counties with fewer than 400,000 residents as of the last census to decide whether to allow houses of prostitution. Ten of Nevada’s 17 counties do. Washoe County, home to Reno, is not one of them. Clark County, home to Vegas, could not even if it wanted to, as it is too big. The 24 brothels currently operating mostly reside in sparsely populated northern Nevada, around the I-80 corridor.

For context, it’s useful to look at a map and you’ll see that the I-80 corridor is nowhere near Vegas:

These places are probably more accessible to Salt Lake City than to Nevada’s main population center. The interesting hypothesis is that the tiny legal industry matters as a marketing issue:

These businesses generally cater to tourists and truckers. “It is important symbolically, just because it adds to the ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,’ Sin City environment,” says Barb Brents, a sociology professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, and an expert on the sex trade. “But it’s really a very small industry.” Overall, Nevada’s brothels employ about 1,000 people, total, and have combined revenues in the low tens of millions of dollars per year.

I do wonder if the steady spread of legal gambling options in other states will, over time, push the state toward more widespread legalization of prostitution. Casinos alone used to suffice to make a place “Sin City” but casinos are spreading so maybe bringing prostitution to Washoe or Clark County will be necessary to maintain the state’s comparative advantage.

Perhaps the most obvious thing to do in fiscal policy terms is to extent the automatic stabilizer effect that you see on the federal level down to the state level. Since states need to balance their budgets, recessions normally force them to engage in pro-cyclical cutbacks rather than counter-cyclical expansions. But the federal government can borrow money on states’ behalf to help them plug the gap. This is a good idea and it was in the House bill. On this morning’s Meet The Press, Barney Frank slammed the cutback on this state fiscal aid, observing “Money to go to the states to stop them from laying off cops and firefighters, money to help keep teachers going. Those are jobs.” Ali Frick reports that Senator John Ensign was having none of it:

Ensign (R-NV) — who began the show by saying that doing nothing would be better than passing this stimulus plan — insisted that states’ budgets are “bloated” and derided Frank’s concerns as “fearmongering,” denying that any teachers, cops, or firefighters would lose their jobs:

To get back to what Congressman Frank said, is that we’re going to be laying off teachers and firefighters. You know, that’s just fearmongering. We’re not going to be doing that in any of the states. … [The states’] budgets are bloated, the federal government’s budget is bloated. What we should be doing is cutting back.

The idea that it would be good for states to cut back in the midst of the recession is stupid. The idea that the recession won’t, absent federal aid, lead to layoffs of state employees such as teachers and firefighters is also stupid. But the idea that it’s simultaneously true that the reason we should eschew aid is that states need to cut back and also true that it’s fearmongering to warn of layoffs is doubleplus stupid. What does Ensign think cutbacks consist of? States will be reducing vital services. The cutbacks will have the immediate impact of reducing the incomes of laid-off families and beneficiaries of state programs. That will have an additional impact on businesses where the newly laid-off teachers and cops used to work.

And the reduced level of service will have its own bad economic impacts. Cutting back public safety budgets will mean fewer cops on the beat. That means more crime which will further reduce economic activity. State cutbacks to child care subsidies will make it harder for people who lose jobs to find and accept new ones. The cutbacks to mass transit services that are happening across the country will introduce additional rigidity into the labor market and reduce patronage of businesses that people are accustomed to reaching via transit. And in the most severe cases, cutbacks in assistant to the severely impoverished will have a decades-long impact on the well-being of their children.

In Ensign’s home state they’re talking about a fifteen percent cut in K-12 education. Does Gibbons really think that can be implemented without a detrimental impact on Nevada’s citizens and local economy?

The basic way that politics works in Nevada is that Clark County — i.e., Las Vegas and its suburbs — is Democratic and has a lot of people in it. Then Washoe County — i.e., Reno and its suburbs, plus some rural areas — is politically competitive and has some people in it. Then the rest of the state is very sparsely population and strongly Republican. Normally, though, Washoe breaks for the Republicans and thus Nevada is a Republican-leaning state. But Democrats are narrowing the registration edge in Washoe “county Voter Registrar Dan Burk said Republicans had 87,971 registered and Democrats 84,705, with a backlog of more than 5,000 registration applications awaiting processing. Since registration for the primary closed, the Republican edge has shrunk from 5,648 to 3,266.”