Archive for November, 2011

Sell off the federal lands

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

Steve Hill, a Las Vegas businessman and new executive director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, visited with us this month to discuss a new 178-page report from the Brookings Mountain West division, recommending new ways to diversify Nevada’s economy. While Nevada still scores high (everything is relative, you understand) on its tax and […]

Let us count the magic beans

Monday, November 28th, 2011

The congressional deficit-reduction “supercommittee” said Nov. 21 it had failed to reach an agreement on slashing the U.S. deficit by at least $1.2 trillion. That failure will supposedly trigger mandatory cuts to military spending and some social programs, starting in 2013. Or, perhaps, when pigs fly.

Carrying legal pistols across state lines

Sunday, November 27th, 2011

No one spent much time talking about the role of the Internal Revenue Service in causing the death of seven employees at a Wakefield, Mass., software company on the day after Christmas, 2000. The defendant in the killings, Michael McDermott, 43, was convicted on seven counts of first-degree murder.

God bless America

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

And so, as beefy gladiators chase a pigskin down the field in Miami or Detroit, we settle into our living rooms, loosen our belts, wave off a second helping of pie, and remind the little ones this is the day we echo the thanks of the Pilgrims, who gathered in the autumn of 1621 to […]

Anything to distract us from main issue: zombie economy

Sunday, November 20th, 2011

Shall we choose our next president based on who smooched who behind the bleachers in the eighth grade? The presence on the GOP ticket of black businessman Herman Cain would take away the last likely line of Democratic attack against those who might decline to re-elect failed socialist poseur Barack Obama — that if you’re […]

Since there is no such thing as a ‘flux capacitor,’ that can’t be a ‘flux capacitor’

Friday, November 18th, 2011

“The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race,” the Obama administration said in a Nov. 4 statement. Honest.

The ‘Green Road’ to economic ruin

Monday, November 14th, 2011

The political cyncism of President Barack Obama — who’s been on a seemingly non-stop “jobs”-themed re-election tour for a month — as he now postpones for another two years the creation of thousands of high-paying, private-sector jobs building a pipeline to bring $15-a-barrel Canadian oil to American refineries, is stupefying. The $7 billion, 1,700-mile Keystone […]

Time again for the annual Christmas book list

Sunday, November 13th, 2011

Books make great Christmas gifts: No one ever complains they’re the wrong size or color. Great books reveal themselves when their audiences expand beyond their assigned pigeonholes. Finally asking for guidance after dividing and quartering the fiction sections for 20 minutes, I can still remember having to crawl on my hands and knees through the […]

‘That’s not the public part of the report’

Sunday, November 6th, 2011

I called Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie’s office Nov. 1, looking for the official report on the Sept. 15 traffic accident involving Metro jail guard Victor Hunter, who died of a massive heart attack a block and a half from the jail (per the county coroner’s office), after reportedly being given a shot and told […]

‘’Until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess from the public treasury’

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

A record 49 percent of Americans live in a household where someone receives at least one type of government benefit, according to the Census Bureau. That’s up from 46 percent in 1975 and 18 percent in 1940. In fact, 63 percent of all federal spending this year will consist of checks written to individuals for […]