Gibbons’ State Of The State Address
On the eve of our new governor’s State of The State address, I thought it would be interesting to actually take a look at the state of our state as judged by advocacy groups who make it their business to evaluate how states perform in a variety of areas important to their citizens and the nation. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again–you get what you pay for. Its one thing to ask government agencies for more accountability while still allowing them to improve upon their results by redrawing priorities and resources. Its quite another to conclude that state agencies aren’t efficient and never will be, so giving them more resources is throwing good money after bad. It doesn’t have to be an either or solution.
Nevada faces legitimate challenges; a high percentage of immigrants and an under-educated workforce for example. However, these are challenges to be faced with well thought out strategies and adequate resources. When the state in which you live tops the list in the percentage of homeless people, meth use, and crime, and ranks near the bottom in health care, child services, and K-12 education, at some point, you have to ask yourself if that makes you proud? How great is it to be from the state that only immunizes 64% of its two year olds? The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has higher expectations for third world countries. Surely Nevada can do as well as that? Perhaps its time to think about what it really means when our state mantra seems to be “no new taxes no matter what?” Perhaps we could prioritize what’s in our wallets a bit less, and our future, a bit more.
Social Services
Just yesterday, the Children’s Advocacy Alliance awarded Nevada a D- for the state’s child services. Nevada beats only New Mexico (the comments on the RGJ story are more idiotic than usual). Particularly shameful is our 64% rate of immunization among 2 year olds.
Nevada ranks first in the percentage of its population that is homeless.
Crime
Nevada is THE most dangerous state in 2006 according to Morgan Quinto Press. Morgan Quinto gathers, sums, and rates the rates for six crime categories — murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft to create the ranking.
Education
The Education Research Center’s annual “Quality Counts 2007 report, “From Cradle to Career: Connecting American Education from Birth Through Adulthood,” ranked Nevada 44th in the nation for proficiency in math and reading, and for graduation rates.
Nevada is one of the five dumbest states in the country–47th to be exact.
Health Care
Nevada was ranked 38th out of the fifty states in 2006 for the health of its citizens by the United Health Foundation.
Quality of Life
Nevada ranked last in job quality in a 2005 study conducted by Arizona State University.
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“There are three kinds of lies — Lies, damned lies, and statistics. ”
If you wanna conjure up some crap-ass stats to say whatever the hell you want them to, then go for it. Most of these “rankings” are lame. Especially the ASU one. The hell do some yayhoos at ASU know? Nuthin.
Why must we all adhere to our competitive nature? Go Nevada! We’re number one!
Lies? As much as we love Nevada, there are some very real concerns (truths) about that list of stats. The state has much to offer, but there is a huge to-do list if any social, cultural, economic, political “progress”/credibility is anticipated in the near future.
I agree with sugafree99, that ASU study was from 2003, it’s now 2007. Nevada has actually come a long way since then and it would be a lot better off if certain politicians and interest groups didn’t propose a gross receipts tax. That proposal single-handedly scared away hundreds of business that would have thousands of quality jobs.
I think Myrna is right on. Nevada is still behind the curve in many areas that determine our quality of life here. These studies are all small and potentially challengable indicators, but there aren’t too many reputable analyses to say they are wildly off the mark either.
We need to be more aggressive in our efforts to fix what’s not working now and prepare for the inevitable future.
The inevitable future involves the demise of all mankind.
We may do it ourselves, or it may be the irkans.
“Our mission starts now! Let us reign some doom down upon the filthy heads of our doomed enemies!”
Not that I disagree with the larger point of “we need to fund human capital”, but I think the crime statistics are less dire than they seem. For example - crime. Las Vegas saw something like 45 million visitors in 2005. So when you’re comparing Las Vegas to other cities, you have to consider that on any given day, we probably have a large population of random transients here. And they’re on vacation, in Vegas, where they’re more likely to engage in risky behavior (like, say, drinking) that is correlated with more crimes. Presumably Reno has a smaller but still noticeable distortion of the same type. So while I’m sure a lot of our crime is attributable to the usual torn social fabric and lack of investment in poorer areas, the situation is not as dire as it’s made out to be.
Again, not that I disagree with the larger point, but I think the ranking vis-a-vis crime is somewhat off.