Let’s get this straight, according to a 5-4 one-sentence U.S. Supreme Court ruling Friday, if a Nevada church were to hold a bingo night in its 500-seat auditorium, under Gov. Steve Sisolak’s diktat, 250 people could attend, since the governor’s orders allow 50 percent capacity for casinos, but, if someone were to say a prayer, 200 would have to leave, since the governor says only 50 people may attend church services.
Minutes after President Trump announced in the Rose Garden this past week a plan to revise the priorities under which immigrants are accepted into the United States, Democrats and media outlets were calling his proposal dead on arrival, having no chance of being approved by Congress.
Sometimes good intentions can create more problems than they solve. Take Senate Bill 165 for example.
Nevada lawmakers held hearings recently on this bill that would legalize and tightly regulate physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill. The bill would allow competent adults diagnosed to be within six months of death, as diagnosed by two physicians, to be prescribed medication that the patient could self-administer to “peacefully end his or her life.”The problem is that the 28-page bill goes far beyond that simple, seemingly liberating and decriminalizing notion by opening up the potential for widespread abuses and unintended consequences.
Democratic lawmakers in Carson City are at it again, bound and determined to give your presidential ballots to the voters of California and New York.
Two years ago — after Donald Trump won the Electoral College vote by 304 to 227, though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.9 million individual votes — a bill was introduced that would have had Nevada join in something called the “Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote.”
We asked in an editorial published shortly before the November election whether the constitutional amendment on the ballot in Nevada and other states — known as Marsy’s Law and sold as a victim rights measure — could prevent the release of names of crime victims and crime reports that keep the public aware of public safety issues and how well justice is being delivered by our elected and appointed police, prosecutors and judges.
Marsy’s Law is being pushed nationwide by the wealthy family of Marsalee “Marsy” Nicholas, who was killed in 1983 by her ex-boyfriend. Family members were miffed when they walked into a grocery store and saw the ex-boyfriend, who had been released on bail without their knowledge. Whether bail would have been granted even if they were informed of the hearing is a matter of conjecture.
After learning this past week that the Department of Energy had secretly shipped a thousand pounds of weapons-grade plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site in Nye County before the state had filed a federal lawsuit in November seeking to block such shipments, Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak and the state’s entire Democratic delegation to D.C. flew into paroxysms of apoplexy, accusing the Trump administration of deception and dealing unfairly with the state.
Sisolak put out a statement declaring, “I am beyond outraged by this completely unacceptable deception from the U.S. Department of Energy. The Department led the State of Nevada to believe that they were engaging in good-faith negotiations with us regarding a potential shipment of weapons-grade plutonium, only to reveal that those negotiations were a sham all along. They lied to the State of Nevada, misled a federal court, and jeopardized the safety of Nevada’s families and environment.”
In a section of the 88-page brief filed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that argues that prosecutors were simply trying to balance disclose of data against “protecting witnesses and victims from real and on-going threats,” prosecutors note that “in June 2014, Jerad and Amanda Miller, two extremists who had been at Bundy’s property in April, murdered two Las Vegas police officers as they ate lunch, then draped a Gadsden flag over one of the officers and shouted this was the start of ‘a revolution,’ and later killed a civilian as well.”
What they continue to neglect to mention is that the Millers were a couple of leftist, anti-authoritarian lunatics who showed up at the Bundy ranch standoff with BLM agents trying to confiscate his cattle but were told by the Bundys to leave because of their “very radical” views.
For the past year a national commission has been studying the issue of whether all young Americans should be required to perform public service — either military or some form of civilian service — and whether women should be required to register for the draft as men are currently required to do, even though the draft has not been used since 1973.
The National Commission on Military, National and Public Service is chaired by former Nevada Congressman, emergency room physician and Army Reserve Brig Gen. Joe Heck. He was interviewed on NPR public radio this past week about the status of the commission’s endeavors.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case this past week that could alter the ability of a private citizen to seek justice in his state’s courts when public employees from another state abuse their powers and step over the line of common decency. The case is titled Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt.
It all started in 1993 when a tax auditor for the Franchise Tax Board of California read a newspaper article about how wealthy California computer chip inventor, Gilbert Hyatt, had recently moved to Nevada, which, unlike California, has no income tax. The auditor investigated and concluded Hyatt had not moved to Nevada as early as he claimed. The tax board said Hyatt owed California nearly $15 million in taxes and penalties.
Now that California’s Energy Commission has approved mandatory efficiency standards for all homes built in the state after Jan. 1, 2020, including the requirement that rooftop solar panels be used, a self-styled environmental group is calling on every state to require solar panels on new homes.
Environment America Research & Policy Center says the requirement would save homeowners money and clean up the environment.
The California Energy Commission predicts that its new efficiency measures will mean new homes will use 7 percent less energy, but when the solar generation is factored in the home will use about 53 percent less electricity from the grid. So the bulk of the “savings” will come from the solar panels.
It’s called voting with your feet.
A remarkable number of well-heeled Americans are doing just that, and it should serve as a warning to Nevada voters and candidates as we enter an election year. Though Republican governors in recent years have shepherded through the Legislature record-high tax increases, Nevada still fares fairly well in comparison to other states when it comes to the tax burden borne by citizens of the Silver State. …