Stop the presses: People don’t like taxes.

The news coverage surrounding the Tax and Spending Control initiative has always been a little breathless, but it’s getting even more so after TASC master (and state senator) (and candidate for governor) (and a hell of a good-looking guy) Bob Beers turned in boxes with 152,984 signatures to Secretary of State (and congressional candidate) Dean Heller Tuesday.

So, people in Nevada don’t like taxes. This is not news, readers. Anybody except inept bumblers like George Harris or Tony Dane can qualify signatures on an anti-tax petition. (A Prop. 13-style measure that aimed to limit property taxes circulated by Assemblywoman [and congressional candidate] Sharron Angle didn’t qualify, however. She blamed attacks by liberal activists — let’s add her to the inept bumbler list, too, shall we?)

But the fact is, Beers’ anti-tax message is a simple and compelling one, and he was on that message when speaking to the newspaper that loves him with an erotic love, the Review-Journal.

“The number of signatures collected makes it clear how important this issue is to Nevadans. This takes the authority for rapid expansion of government out of the hands of politicians and special interests and puts it in the hands of the people,” Beers said.

Got that? Taxes bad. Government bad. Politicians bad. Special interests bad. People, good. That, too, isn’t news. Republicans have been saying that ever since Barry Goldwater, and it’s become an art form thanks to former President Ronald Reagan.

Leave aside, of course, that the initiative will leave less money for things that “special interests” desperately want, like roads, schools, teachers, and the like. Those damn special interests and their constant attempts to expand the government!

Leave aside also that “special interests” including the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, which has joined with the AFL-CIO in a strange bedfellows moment to oppose TASC.

Speaking of the AFL-CIO, union boss Danny Thompson told the R-J that he thinks some petitions are invalid, because they deviated from the language given to the secretary of state. (And Thompson should know; his group sued to get a particularly misleading passage clarified.) Some might argue that he’s simply trying to keep the measure away from voters, but they’d be ignoring the fact that petition circulators must follow the law like everybody else. And TASC, which had to be drafted and re-drafted, has had a particularly difficult time standing up to scrutiny. (This fact was lost on the R-J’s editorial page, which identified the TASC battle as the hottest debate on the ballot, and said opponents were merely apologists for the “status quo.”)

But is it news that lots of people in Nevada fall so easily for the anti-tax message, or that they don’t connect taxes in their minds with the things that taxes buy for them? Hardly.