Submitted by Greg Kidd
To revitalize Reno, I propose creating a Nevada-based payments banking industry, a Nevada Permanent Fund from lithium profits, and incentives to develop empty lots. Let’s innovate.
Let’s reimagine Reno.
It’s an autumn night. The air is still warm from the waning days of summer and we’re walking on South Virginia Street, not far from our home. The housing is affordable and delightful. It’s a thriving scene of small fashion and design boutiques, craft breweries and wine shops; handmade crafts, cozy coffee shops, bakeries serving local pastries, and new restaurants, art galleries, parks and cycling shops. There are no blighted, empty blocks in town.
Your ideal Reno may differ from mine. But no matter what it is, one thing is sure: we need financial innovation to reimagine Reno. We don’t need cheap sloganeering. We need an inventive plan for what to do.
That is why I have proposed a series of innovations, including a new industry based here in Reno. Just as the credit card industry flocked to South Dakota, we can have the payments banking industry flock to Reno. Institutions like Venmo, PayPal, Western Union, and others currently need 50 different licenses in 50 different states. But we can offer a better way. With one Nevada-based bank, we can license once for all fifty states.
This brings jobs. Lots of jobs.
Then we will need to regulate it. That creates even more jobs – and we’re already very good at that in Nevada, from the gaming industry.
Next, I’ve proposed a Nevada Permanent Fund, modeled on the Alaska Permanent fund. That fund was established in 1976 and currently has $74 billion in it. Each year, every resident of Alaska gets a $1600 payment, and the fund continues to grow. What they did was simple: you want to take our oil? OK, but 25 cents out of every dollar goes into the Alaska Permanent Fund.
Here in Nevada we have been giving away our lithium – estimated to be worth about $1.5 trillion – to a Canada-based mining company that is financed by China. That is what happens when you have a Congressional representative who takes money from the mining companies.
I will never take a penny from any outside sources. I will always work to do what’s best for the people of Nevada.
If we start it now and renegotiate future deals with the mining companies, we will make a Nevada that all Nevadans deserve. Ironically it will enable us to build the infrastructure that the mining companies really need to attract their workers. We need to act now, for our own benefit and for our children and grandchildren, and for generations to come.
We also need a bond issue that incentivizes the owners of empty lots to build – or even just to create a public park – rather than to neglect.
Let’s lead. Let’s innovate. Let’s take smart risks. Let others look to us to see what we can be.
That’s why I’m running to be your next representative to Congress.
Paid for by Greg Kidd for Congress Nevada District 2
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