How Stupid Are Your Friendly Bankers?

Many years ago, I was new to Las Vegas (although had owned many radio stations for many years) and I got a call from my new Las Vegas radio station manager who had a representative from the Clark County Business License department in the station.

“You need a license to operate a radio station in unincorporated Clark County,” the county employee told me.

“We do,” I said. “It was issued by the Federal Communications Commission in Washington D.C. “

“No,” said the county employee. “You need one from us.”

I allowed as to how that didn’t seem to comport with Federal law and the county employee said that he didn’t care.

I called the Nevada Broadcasters Association of which I was then a member. This is the sort of outrageous governmental abuse that broadcasters’ associations in most states fight with an intensity as high as they reserve for selling advertising.

“Just shut and pay the fee,” the executive director told me. “Don’t make waves.”

Since Tsunami is practically my middle name, I had my lawyer meet with than DA Stewart Bell and he allowed as to how the county can’t make Federally chartered banks get a business license so I was right and that was the end of it.

Except that I withdrew my membership in the Nevada Broadcasters Association, never to darken their door again.

(The money was never the issue. It was the fact that the county’s ordinance gives the County Commission the right to shut a radio station down and that flies in the face of the law.)

Bill Uffelman, for the past two months the new president of the Nevada Bankers Association, is courting that sort of reaction from a lot more than one of his members because of his proposal to fund the so-called Nevada Taxpayers Association’s lawsuit to take the tax-repeal petition off the ballot.

Uffelman wants to spend $60,000 of your banker’s money so that your bankers can tell the 68,327 people who signed that petition to go to hell, that they don’t count and their signature means nothing.

I suspect that when the phone lines to the Charlotte, North Carolina, headquarters of the Bank of America, Kenneth Lewis, CEO, start heating up, when the corporate headquarters of U.S. Bank in Minneapolis, Jerry Grundhofer, CEO, gets wind of this, when the guy in San Francisco who runs the Wells Fargo stage-coach, Richard Kovacevich, gets a few calls they may begin to understand that this was not the smartest idea ever hatched by a bureaucrat.

For the record, banking pays well at that level. Lewis made $38.09-Million last year, Grundhofer made $16.78-Million last year and Kovacevich made $36.39-Million last year. They ought to sympathize with people who want to repeal a tax increase, even if they don’t live here. (And if you want to call them, here are the numbers listed in their filings with the Federal Government: Bank of America, (704) 386-8486, Well’s Fargo -800-411-4932, U.S. Bank 651-466-3000)

Uffelman isn’t a bad guy.

It’s just that he suffers from the “masses are asses” mentality of most “big picture” people.

He thinks government by petition is a bad idea.

But it exists because it gives the taxpayers a final check and balance on a system of government which has become a growth industry.

My guess is that after a bit of pressure from their customers, most of the members of the Association will think again about the efficacy of this idea and reject it out of hand.

If they don’t maybe a boycott of those who voted in favor is in order.

Because if they want to raise our taxes, maybe they’re doing so well they no longer need our business.

This is what happens when people who think they run things think that they’re smarter than us “little people” who just happen to be their customers.

Our experience is that the people who vote are one hell of a lot smarter than the people who hold positions from which they want to tell us how to vote. Or stop us from voting at all.

I’m back in the radio business these days and I can promise you that I won’t be spending my money with the Nevada Broadcasters Association. I’ll be willing to bet that should the Nevada Bankers Association allow this crazy idea to go forward, there will be more than a few defections from their ranks as well.

Do we have to type any louder?

FRED WEINBERG