Opinion

Another Memorial Day has come. Today we observe the sacrifices of men and women who gave the last full measure of devotion in defense of the United States of America.

I was going to write about how this year marks the sesquicentennial of Decoration Day, predecessor to the modern Memorial Day holiday.

Liberty is the absence of murder, slavery and tyranny. Liberty is the "freedom to choose" constrained by the golden rule with equal individual responsibility to choose wisely.

When my sister and I were in college, we often had difficulty sharing information by computer. I worked on an Apple Macintosh, while she used an International Business Machines (IBM) unit with a Microsoft Windows operating system.

“Shall Article 1 of the Nevada Constitution be amended to require the Legislature to provide by law for the establishment of an open, competitive retail electric energy market that prohibits the granting of monopolies and exclusive franchises for the generation of electricity?”

Who wouldn’t want an open, competitive retail electric energy market? Haven’t monopolies franchised by the government produced many problems? And isn’t market-type reform the answer?

Growing up in Oregon's Willamette Valley, I had become accustomed to the occasional paper plant along the Interstate 5 corridor between Eugene and Portland.

There's a reason why we celebrate moms and dads on different days of the year. Their love, though measured the same, is expressed differently.

Today I'm going to tell you the story of a mother's love.

Waiting to turn left onto Fifth from Carson Street Friday afternoon, I asked myself, "Why am I sitting through five light changes?"

This is Carson City, after all, not Reno.

Check out the detail elements at the four story retail and residential masterpiece at 308 North Curry Street in Carson City. The real story about this building lies in its historical accuracy to late 19th century construction.

During World War II, German intelligence officers learned to spot American spies from cues as simple as their eating habits.

Westerners commonly used the same hand for the fork as they did the knife, putting one down to pick up the other. Nazi agents observed this subtle behavior, often tipping them off to American spies.

Edwin Lyngar, a freelance writer, penned a “From the Left” piece this week in the Reno paper under the headline, “Trump’s tax policy is an attack on the community”. He hit the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), President Trump and all Republicans and limited government conservatives.

We say “hit” because it was the usual leftwing label-and-bash fest, long on nasty rhetoric and not only devoid of evidence, but in fact contrary to well known facts and data.

His opening sentence calls the TCJA, “terrible … and a massive redistribution of wealth to the already super-rich.”

We need a break from politics. So, it’s our good fortune this month marks the 50th anniversary of perhaps the most remarkable film ever, producer/director Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Even more than Gone with the Wind, it was the most revolutionary film. It was radically different from everything before it, and it influenced all film after it more than any other work. Yet, nothing made since 1968 is really like it, either.

This fourth column on the Controller’s Annual Report (CAR) analyzes state taxes. Nevada collected $5.523 billion in taxes in fiscal year 2017, which was 41 percent of total state revenues. As discussed in our previous column, program revenues made up 56 percent, with miscellaneous items at three percent.

The largest tax sources were sales and use taxes ($1.285 billion or 23 percent of general revenues of $5.895 billion), gaming taxes ($897 million or 16 percent) and unemployment assessments ($825 million, or ten percent). All other taxes totaled $2.516 billion, or 43 percent).

his is the second column based on the Controller’s Annual Report for fiscal year 2017 (FY17). Here we disclose where the state spends its money.

Total state spending for FY17 was $12.29 billion: $11.033 billion (90 percent) from regular state accounts, including pass-through federal funds; $1.211 billion (ten percent) from tuition, fees, contracts, grants and other service charges by higher education; and $46 million in two other areas. The total was 74 percent higher than in FY06, or 17 percent more in real per-person terms.

We have just issued the Controller’s Annual Report (CAR) for fiscal year 2017 (FY17). Here we provide an overview of it. Future columns will discuss individual sections.

The CAR provides Nevada citizens, officials and others a summary of key facts, data, analysis and issues about the state’s fiscal condition and challenges. The Controller has a statutory charge to recommend plans for: support of public credit; promoting frugality and economy; better management of the state’s fiscal affairs; and better understanding of them.

The first part of our two-column series on President Calvin Coolidge reviewed his early career, culminating in his service as Massachusetts governor. Today, his time as vice president and 30th president.

In 1920, Coolidge was a favorite son candidate for president from Massachusetts. At that time, most states chose delegates to the Republican national convention at their state conventions.

John Calvin Coolidge Jr., our 30th President, 1923-1929, was perhaps America’s most under-rated chief executive. He was a man of few words, decisive action and a dry sense of humor.

“Silent Cal” was born on the Fourth of July in 1872 in Vermont, the son of a prominent local farmer, general store owner, postmaster and politician. He was the only president born on Independence Day, although three former presidents died on the Fourth.

"For society to attempt to solve its desperate problems (for example, gun violence) without the full participation of even very young people is imbecile." This is a formal social observation by Alvin Toffler is personalized in lay terms by John Wayne as, "You're short on ears and long on mouth."

When Ron was in law school, on the first day of his class on income tax law, the professor was singing praises of income taxes and got carried away. The prof, an expert who had written the book on the subject, said that income tax law is good law because it’s not an all-or-nothing thing like much of civil or criminal law. Instead, it’s proportional.

That’s true, of course, although not quite the high virtue he seemed to suggest. Anyway, when he said the income tax was perhaps one of mankind’s great inventions, Ron objected.

Last August 9, law professors Amy Wax and Larry Alexander published an article, “Paying the Price for the Breakdown of the Country’s Bourgeois Culture,” in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

It began:

Ron is boycotting the National Football League, but for reasons you’ll soon learn, James is still very much interested. So, this column is James’s full responsibility.

Let’s take a look back at a coaching decision by a future Hall of Fame NFL coach.
Back in 1991, this man was hired for his first head coaching position. He was hired to lead a franchise with a rich history and tradition of winning. The team had been as far as the AFC championship game three times in the previous six years, losing all three times to the same opponent.

Leave it to the Democrats to be mad that the American people finally get some help from Washington! The recent Republican tax reform has already benefitted hundreds of thousands of Americans with bonuses and 90+ percent will see larger paychecks. That 90+ percent includes a lot of their Democrat constituents too!

In the United States, some states have the provision of voter registration as unaffiliated. Other states have that classification as independent. Nearly a dozen states do not have registration by party. (That voter is just required to call for a partisan ballot on primary day.

As Oprah ponders a run for the Presidency as a Democrat, she might pause and reflect on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. today honoring a great Republican. Dr. King chose to be a registered Republican because he knew, as does anyone who knows civil rights history, that the Democrats were the party of; slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow, and builders of Confederate war memorial monuments honoring slave owners.

Congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump have passed a landmark tax reduction and reform bill. Democrats, mainstream media and other leftists are spreading misinformation about the effects.

Let’s set the record straight.

First, “The new law is larded with provisions custom-made for the rich and superrich while offering mere crumbs for the middle class.” This version of a lie told by many comes from Democrat Alan Blinder, who also said, “it may be the most regressive” tax cut ever.

As we get ready to ring in 2018 and say goodbye to 2017, we want to reflect briefly on the history of the New Year celebration and amuse you with some fun historical facts.

One of the most notable celebrations is that in Times Square in Manhattan. This has been an annual event in New York since 1907.

Nearly every television station will broadcast the “ball drop” in Times Square: A large, lighted crystal ball sliding down a 77-foot pole over the course of the last minute of the year. When the ball reaches the bottom, it is the New Year.

This Christmas marks six years since I lost a child.

The baby boy didn't die, but I nearly did inside when he left.

He was almost my child, one gavel strike away from calling him son.

I had fostered him from infancy to toddler, a total of 16 months in my care.

Many joys come with Christmas and the holiday season. Good food, the company of family and friends, observing the joy of children opening presents, good music and the anticipation of the new year to name just a few.

A special aspect of the season for us is the spirit of giving. We use this time to provide more help than usual for both folks less fortunate and for charitable organizations that do good works in our communities. We know we are blessed to have the means to do so.

In the 100th anniversary of communism last month, three points stood out.
First, polls say half of America’s millennials would rather live under socialism or communism than capitalism.

Second, the reality of communism was, horrifically, exactly the opposite of the naïve view held by today’s young and by many people around the world in the last century.

Third, the essential faults and failures of communism also characterize all government to some degree, especially democratic socialism, progressivism and statist liberalism.

I wanted to take a minute to encourage the great community of Carson City to buy locally! Two businesses in town that I have had the pleasure of dealing with recently are Sun Studio and The Hacienda Market!

If you are looking for a great place to go to have your hair done Mallory Trotter is your gal at Sun Studio in Carson City. She is more than a hair stylist. She is an artist.

Christmas is just around the corner. For small businesses, it is officially the start of the make-or-break holiday shopping season. And this year, passing a tax bill would give small business owners much to be thankful for.

Lawmakers are running low on time to pass a new 25 percent tax rate for small businesses—the largest tax cut in generations, as President Trump often says.

As a small business owner and lawmaker at the state level, my message to Washington is simple: Get the job done. Small business deserves it, voters want it, and the economy needs it.