Vin Suprynowicz

Do we live in a free country, or a police state?

In a free country, police (to the extent they’re needed — more private property rights and less “public property” would vastly increase the ratio of private security guards) live under and must obey the same laws as the rest of us.

In a police state, government police enjoy special laws and protections that allow them to do things that would be considered crimes if done by the rest of us.

Back on June 11, Metropolitan Police Department Detective Bryan Yant led five other armed officers as they beat down the door of an east Las Vegas apartment late at night to arrest a suspected minor marijuana dealer named Trevon Cole.

Finding Cole in the darkened bathroom, where police assert he was flushing the dried medicinal plant down the toilet, Detective Yant, whose flashlight wasn’t working and who neglected to bring along a partner, shot the young black suspect dead.

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At the so-called “Tahoe Summit” last week, our own senior U.S. senator, Unpopular Harry Reid, in between cozying up to fellow moderate Dianne Feinstein (D-San Francisco) and ignoring a call to return the lake to the Washoe Indian tribe (which will probably be able to buy it soon, anyway, the way Indian gaming is going) touted the so-called Travel Promotion Act, signed by President Obama in March, which the senator asserts will create 6,000 new jobs by drawing more foreign tourists to Lake Tahoe and elsewhere.

Under the law, “plans will be developed” to reverse a 10-year national decline in foreign tourism, the senator explained. The law is to be funded by new taxes on tourism businesses and a $10 fee assessed against each foreign visitor.

Next up: a government advertising campaign designed to increase the number of people visiting local 7-Eleven and Circle K convenience stores, to be funded by a tax on such convenience stores (which will thus force them to raise their prices, of course), accompanied by a new $10 admission fee to be charged each time a customer walks into a Circle K or 7-Eleven.

These Washington guys: You’re not going to outsmart them when it comes to basic economics!

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In politics, symbolism is often an easier sell than substance.

So no one should be surprised that a proposal to build a Muslim mosque and community center within blocks of the former site of the World Trade Center — blown up by a gang of vicious Muslim thugs and murderers on Sept. 11, 2001 as a largely symbolic attack on the United States (if 3,000 murders can be reduced to a “symbol”) — has become a political hot-button issue.

First, let’s be clear: The organizer of this project is not some clueless cleric, taken completely by surprise by the furor. No, the project was initially named the “Ground Zero Mosque” not by opponents but by the imam Feisal Abdul Rauf himself, and his new and supposedly less offensive moniker, the “Cordoba Center,” honors the location in Spain where the conquering Muslims built a huge mosque on the site of the demolished Christian Basilica of St. Vincent the Martyr, launching an era of persecution of the local Christians under Abd-ar-Ramman II, which included the martyrdom of St. Eulogius.

Get it?

There are already scores of mosques standing peacefully in New York City and environs — whether New Yorkers will permit Muslims to live and worship peacefully in their midst has never been at issue. New York Gov. David Paterson even offered the mosque-builders free state land if they’d agree to build in a less provocative location. They said “No thanks.”

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As with motherhood and apple pie, both of the major parties in Washington pay lip service to America’s proud tradition of independent small business, historically the creator of the majority of American jobs.

But just as the veil was lifted from the isolated, cocooned world in which our rulers live when a photo opportunity once took President George H.W. Bush to a supermarket — where he responded with the delight of a little boy at what appears to have been his first exposure to a bar-code price scanner — our rulers seem honestly puzzled that their actions continue to destroy the very thing they claim to want to “stimulate.”

Too much regulation? What ever can you mean?

Ask little Julie Murphy, age 7, who departed in tears when county health inspectors shut down her lemonade stand at a local monthly arts fair in Oregon this month, threatening her with a $500 fine for operating without a restaurant license. (What? No demand for a federal taxpayer ID number? Proof of liability insurance? Compliance with lead-testing requirements on paper cups handed to fellow children?)

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As the White House gears up to let the biggest tax hike in American history go into effect on Jan. 1, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner — a millionaire banker appointed by Barack Obama despite the fact he cheated on his own income taxes — said July 25 that allowing big tax hikes targeted at wealthy Americans is “the responsible thing to do” and will not further cripple the nation’s economic growth.

“Just letting those tax cuts that only go to 2 percent to 3 percent of Americans, the highest-earning Americans in the country, expire, I do not believe it will have a negative effect on growth,” while it would send an important message to the world about America’s commitment to fiscal austerity, Mr. Geithner said on ABC.

And so the biggest-spending administration in the history of the world, an outfit that wouldn’t even cut pork-barrel spending somewhere else to fund its unilateral extension of unemployment benefits two weeks back, now smugly asserts a desire to protect its reputation for “fiscal austerity.”

I admit it, I’m impressed. My chutzpah detector just overloaded and died.

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By now most Nevada TV watchers have figured out the Harry Reid jump-cut campaign ad strategy. It would be amusing if it weren’t turning an important, nationally watched campaign that should feature a legitimate debate on the best long-term cure for the American economy into a game of video-clip “Gotcha.”

The 70-year-old, four-term senator can’t very well talk about his own popularity (37 percent, nearing “kitten abuse” territory) or his and his Democratic allies’ “accomplishments” in destroying the American economy. (Have the banks made enough loans to unqualified home buyers to please you guys, yet?)

But let Republican challenger Sharron Angle, a pleasant and principled opponent of higher taxes who served several terms in the Nevada Assembly without being revealed as some kind of lunatic baby-killer, speak in public anywhere, saying “When I get to Washington, I’m going to kill Harry Reid’s entire job-destroying agenda. I’m going to stand by my principles; I don’t care if they come at me with an assault weapon.” (Cheers.)

The next week, in grainy black-and-white and with ominous introductory music more suitable for coverage of a mass murderer, voters will be treated to a version of that speech as edited by Harry Reid’s campaign team, with Nevadans bizarrely cheering Sharron Angle after she apparently says, “When I get to Washington, I’m going to kill Harry Reid … with an assault weapon.”

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It’s been two weeks since three Las Vegas Metro cops shot and killed 38-year-old West Point graduate Erik Scott as he exited a Costco store in the upscale suburb of Summerlin on July 10.

So far, the incident has generated more questions than answers.

If officials lock up the evidence so you can’t get the answers, print the questions.

Erik Scott had a permit; he could legally carry a firearm either open OR concealed.

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Government economics sure are weird.

Imagine you go to the grocery store and the manager tries to convince you to pay $8 for a gallon of milk — twice the usual price.

“But wait,” he says. “I’ll give you a $4 subsidy or rebate for the gallon of milk, which drops the price to an affordable $4.”

That sounds better. But where did the other four dollars come from?

“This is Shifty, our pickpocket. He slipped it out of your pocket as you came in.”

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Here in Las Vegas nine days ago, President Obama, who ran on a promise of post-partisan “change,” made a campaign swing in support of 23-year U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, who has spent 40 of his 70 years on the public payroll.

A passage in Mr. Obama’s Friday speech at UNLV seemed somewhat disconnected from most Americans’ current perception of Washington and what it’s doing to our economy.

Mr. Obama intoned: “As I said on the campaign, and as I’ve repeated many times as President, I believe the greatest generator of jobs in America is our private sector. It’s our entrepreneurs and innovators, who are willing to take a chance on a good idea. … The private sector — not government — is, was, and always will be the source of America’s economic success. That’s why we’ve cut dozens of taxes for the middle class and small businesspeople, extended loan programs to put capital in the hands of startups and worked to reduce the cost of health care for small businesses.”

I conducted an informal survey of Las Vegas small business owners, last week. Nothing fancy or even very scientific. Owners of some sandwich joints where I eat, local bookstores, places like that. None could remember any recent tax cuts or loans or “capital put in their hands” by Barack Obama or the Democratic Congress. Just the opposite — they’re puzzled by the persistence of the slowdown, and seriously worried more tax hikes and government mandates coming down the pike are going to mean lots more shuttered stores and fewer customers.

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“The heads of President Barack Obama’s national debt commission painted a gloomy picture Sunday as the United States struggles to get its spending under control,” The Associated Press reports.

Republican Alan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles told a meeting of the National Governors Association that everything needs to be considered — closing down the federal Departments of Agriculture, Education, Energy, Labor, and Health and Human Services (none of which are authorized by the Constitution, anyway); shutting down the Federal Reserve and going back to minting money of gold and silver; pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan; slashing the Pentagon budget in half; privatizing Social Security, and ending tax-funded wealth redistribution by closing down Medicaid and Medicare, instead turning over medical care for the poor to private, voluntary charities.

No, no, of course neither Demopublican Bowles — former White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton — nor Republicrat Simpson — who as GOP Senate whip in 1990 helped round up enough votes to “help” President George H.W. Bush break his “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge — mentioned any of those things being “on the table.”

You believed that? What you been smoking?

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