Now the Democrats want to compromise?

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.
— Edmund Burke

So, no Republicans showed up at state Sen. Justin Jones’ office to talk compromise about finding ways to fund public education.

Now the Democrats know what it is like to be a wallflower at the legislative dance.

Justin Jones (AP photo)

According to Ed Vogel’s story in the Review-Journal, Jones asked Republicans to meet and work on a compromise, because on Tuesday state Senate Majority Leader Mo Denis, D-Las Vegas, threw in the towel on efforts to raise taxes $300 million for education.

The question is: Where were the compromising Democrats when Republicans offered proposals that would slash wasteful spending and possibly free up existing revenue to fund education?

The answer: AWOL.

Republicans couldn’t even get bills to repeal at least part of the prevailing wage law and reform public employee pensions and collective bargaining out of committee. Most proposals didn’t even have a hearing. Repealing the prevailing wage law alone could save state and local governments $500 million a year on the costs of public works projects.

“On prevailing wages and PERS, it’s hard to compromise,” the Reno newspaper quoted state Sen. Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, as saying earlier,  “And as far as construction defects, we have offered compromises that they don’t want.”

He said these issues were brought up in the past and got nowhere, so why should Democrats bother to deal with them?

Perhaps, because you need at least four votes to reach the two-thirds majority to raise taxes. Reforms and repeals require only a simple majority. Is no Democrat willing to compromise and risk the ballot box ire of the unions?

The answer: Apparently is no.

Gun grabbing: Any law with this many exceptions has got to be flawed

You know it is a bad law when it must contain this many exceptions.

Senate Bill 221 would make it a crime to “transfer” a firearm from one private citizen to another, instead requiring the transfer to go through a license firearms dealer, a background check and a $30 fee. The bill passed the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday on a party-line vote and could be voted on in the Senate today.

As soon as I heard about it, I started wondering what this might criminalize. Could I go to the shooting range with a friend and allow him to fire one of my weapons or I his? Could I give a grandson a rifle?

Well someone sat around for sometime thinking about this too. Here are the exceptions in the bill (line numbers and all):

Sec. 7.8. The provisions of NRS 202.254 do not apply to:
34 1. A transfer of a firearm to a person who is a holder of a
35 permit to carry a concealed firearm issued pursuant to the
36 provisions of NRS 202.3653 to 202.369, inclusive.
37 2. A transfer of a firearm to a person who holds a license as a
38 manufacturer or importer in firearms issued pursuant to 18 U.S.C.
39 § 923.
40 3. A transfer of an antique firearm, as defined in 18 U.S.C. §
41 921, or a curio or relic, as defined in 27 C.F.R. § 478.11.
42 4. A transfer of a firearm that is a gift or loan between family
43 members who are related by consanguinity or affinity within the
44 second degree.
1 5. A transfer of a firearm that occurs by operation of law or
2 because of the death of a person for whom the person transferring
3 the firearm is an executor or administrator of an estate or a
4 trustee of a trust created in a will.
5 6. A transfer of a firearm that is temporary and occurs while
6 in the home of the person to whom the firearm is transferred if the
7 person to whom the firearm is transferred:
8 (a) Is not prohibited from possessing a firearm; and
9 (b) Reasonably believes that possession of the firearm is
10 necessary to prevent imminent death or serious bodily injury to the
11 person making the transfer or others.
12 7. A temporary transfer of possession of a firearm without
13 transfer of ownership or title to ownership of the firearm, if such
14 transfer takes place:
15 (a) At a shooting range located in or on any premises owned or
16 occupied by a duly incorporated organization organized for
17 conservation purposes or to foster proficiency with firearms;
18 (b) At a target firearm shooting competition under the
19 auspices of, or approved by, a state agency or a nonprofit
20 organization; or
21 (c) While hunting, fishing, target shooting or trapping if:
22 (1) The hunting, fishing, target shooting or trapping is
23 legal in all places where the person to whom the firearm is
24 transferred possesses the firearm; and
25 (2) The person to whom the firearm is transferred holds all
26 licenses or permits required for such hunting, fishing, target
27 shooting or trapping.
28 8. A temporary transfer of a firearm that occurs while in the
29 presence of the owner of the firearm.
30 9. A transfer of a firearm from a person serving in the Armed
31 Forces of the United States to an immediate family member if the
32 person transferring the firearm will be deployed outside the United
33 States within 30 days after the transfer.
34 10. A temporary transfer of a firearm from a person to a
35 mental health professional or to the person’s physician if the
36 mental health professional, the physician or the person believes
37 the transfer is necessary to protect the health or safety of the
38 person or others.

Did they miss anything? I’m sure they did.

How to wipe away the crocodile tears of state workers complaining of being underpaid

The next time someone you know who works for state or local government starts whining about how poorly compensated they are, pull out your smart phone and head straight for TransparentNevada.com. The site is maintained by the Nevada Policy Research Institute and was updated with the newest data today.

There you will find the base pay, overtime and benefits for more than 132,000 government employees statewide for the 2012 calendar year. You may look up data by name, job title and by jurisdiction — from the state of Nevada to all the counties and many cities and specialty agencies. The data goes back a few years for many agencies.

Since the state Legislature is in session and state workers are engaged in their biennial weeping of buckets full of crocodile tears, I scanned the data across various pay grades for random individuals to see their tales of woe hold water.

Recently a Jennifer Knight, identifying herself as a state employee, penned a letter to the Reno newspaper detailing how downtrodden and underpaid state workers are. She claimed many are on food stamps and qualify for Medicaid. She stated:

“When the economy bottomed out, we rose to Nevada’s call. We spent less time with our families so that fellow Nevadans could clothe and feed their children and maintain their dignity and independence. We sacrificed so that Nevada may recover because we believe in its recovery, and it is recovering. The average weekly wage just hit a record high! It is now time for Nevada to make its state employees whole, for our sacrifices have become untenable.”

It’s a familiar story.

Checking TransparentNevada I found a Jennifer A. Knight, who is an unemployment insurance representative 3, and sure enough this Ms. Knight has seen a pay cut of 4.7 percent since 2009, when she got a hefty pay raise while the private sector was tanking.

According to the Census Bureau, the median household income in Nevada has fallen 14 percent since 2008. Of course, many of these households had a wage earner’s pay fall 100 percent.

When I checked those couple dozen names of state workers across salary ranges from $10,000 to more than $100,000, almost universally, the workers got decent pay hikes between 2008 and 2009 but have taken — due to unpaid furlough days imposed by the governor (Spent less time with their families?) — modest pay cuts between 2011 and 2012. Most cuts from the 2009 highs appear to range from about 3 percent to 6 percent. There were a few larger cuts, some of which could be explained by individual circumstances such as leave of absence or resignation sometime during 2012.

Don’t let them tell you how much worse off they are than the private sector. A check of a different database, this one at the Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation reveals 2012 Nevada average weekly wages of: private sector, $815; state government, $898; local government, $996; federal government, $1,251.

By the way, the governor said in April that as of July 2014 state workers will no longer have to take unpaid furlough days. Problem solved? I suspect state workers will still be whining.

Our representatives in Washington and Carson City are engaging in blatant discrimination

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” — Declaration of Independence

It is called identity politics and it results in some strange behavior by otherwise rational and principled individuals. In the realm of identity politics it matters not so much that each of us is unique in our own right, the only thing that matters is the groups to which we are members: gender, race, ethnic heritage, religion, etc., etc.

Alvarez

This leads to discrimination. Discrimination cuts both ways. In some cases a group is deemed less equal than others, while in others — in Animal Farm-fashion — some are more equal than others. Both are large under the natural law concept embodied in the Declaration.

On Monday, the House of Representatives passed the “Stolen Valor Act of 2013” by 390-3. The bill’s chief sponsor was Nevada’s Joe Heck, a Republican, but it had 127 co-sponsors. Democrats Dina Titus and Steven Horsford voted for the bill. Republican Mark Amodei did not vote.

The Supreme Court last year struck down the original “Stolen Valor Act,” which made it a crime for a person to have claimed to have won military honors or metals that he did not, as an unconstitutional restraint of free speech.

Justice Anthony Kennedy opined in U.S. v. Alvarez:

“The First Amendment itself ensures the right to respond to speech we do not like, and for good reason. Freedom of speech and thought flows not from the beneficence of the state but from the inalienable rights of the person. And suppression of speech by the government can make exposure of falsity more difficult, not less so. Society has the right and civic duty to engage in open, dynamic, rational discourse. These ends are not well served when the government seeks to orchestrate public discussion through content-based mandates.”

So, the bill has been altered to make it a crime to claim such unearned metals in obtaining anything of value, such as government benefits, a job reserved for a veteran or a contract. Violators could be fined and/or imprisoned.

A week ago the Nevada Assembly passed a bill that had already passed the state Senate making it a “hate crime,” subject to enhanced punishment,  to commit a crime due to a person’s “gender identity or expression.” Current law already allows enhanced penalties for crimes committed because of race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation and physical or mental disability.  The governor has said he would sign it.

What we have in both cases is discrimination due to identity — disparate treatment under the law, even though the 14th Amendment says no state may “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

To falsely obtain financial benefit is already a fraud. To up the ante because of a person “steals valor” denies equal protection of the laws. Besides, no one can steal valor. It is earned and is hardly tarnished or diminished because some crackpot prances around wearing metals he did not earn.

Likewise, enhancing penalties for favored groups — whether they were once held in disfavor or not — is a denial of equal protection of the laws. And what judge or jury can read a person’s mind and determine whether he stole another’s money because he wanted the money or because he disliked someone due to race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability or gender identity or expression.

After a crime has been committed, at that point, what difference does it make whether the victim was a member of some favored group? Is crime against a person excluded from these groups somehow less heinous, less important, less deserving of punishment?

Each of us is a minority of one.

Listen to Barack, listen to Barack, and tell me what he said

We call the bird Barack

A couple of weeks ago when we were enjoying the spring weather and chatting about the flora and fauna, especially the song birds, alert reader Bill Wilson commented on a mockingbird that had taken up residence near his home:

“We have a fireplace that faces all direction in our home.

“The little bugger sits on the chimney every morning and sings down the chimney until we are awake. Once he has accomplished that, he guards the pyracantha bush next to the back door. If you came within 5 feet of the bush, he dive bombs you.

“We call him Barack, he talks incessantly, doesn’t really say a damn thing, and then abuses us at every opportunity.”

Now, listen to this morning’s radio address by Obama, think of all the ongoing scandals in his administration and see if you don’t fully agree.

Pop quiz: Name one substantive thing he said. Just one.

This is the description of the Northern Mockingbird:

“If you’ve been hearing an endless string of 10 or 15 different birds singing outside your house, you might have a Northern Mockingbird in your yard. These slender-bodied gray birds apparently pour all their color into their personalities. They sing almost endlessly, even sometimes at night, and they flagrantly harass birds that intrude on their territories, flying slowly around them or prancing toward them, legs extended, flaunting their bright white wing patches.”

It is long past time for Nevada to take control of federal land

Earlier this week, the House Natural Resources Committee approved Rep. Mark Amodei’s H.R. 761, the National Strategic and Critical Minerals Production Act of 2013, which requires federal agencies to expedite mining permits on federal land, setting a deadline of 30 months instead of the customary 10 years or more.

During debate on the bill a Utah congressman pointed out the bill would not be necessary if the states in the West controlled their public lands instead of far off federal agencies.

Meanwhile, in Carson City, Elko Republican Assemblyman John Ellison’s Assembly Bill 227 would create a task force to do just that, which is the topic of this week’s newspaper column, available online at The Ely Times and the Elko Daily Free Press.

Since the mid-1990s Nevada has been trying to take control of the 85 percent of the state controlled by the federal government.

In 1956 the voters of Nevada amended the state Constitution to allow taxation of federal lands, should the Congress ever consent. In 1996 the voters again amended the Constitution to remove the so-called Disclaimer Clause that gave dominion over the land to the feds.

And then … nothing. To this day, the state Constitution contains a note saying these amendments are to take effect when Congress or the courts act. Neither has.

AB227 would establish a task force to prepare for taking over federal lands by June 30, 2015. The task force would identify which public lands should be transferred and propose a plan for the administration, management, use, sale or lease of those lands. It also would perform an economic analysis of the potential costs and revenues of such transfers. Ellison colorfully describes the federal government’s dominion over the vast majority of state land for 150 years as “feudalism.”

The bill passed out of the Assembly with all 15 Republicans voting “aye,” but with 18 of the 26 Democrats voting “nay.”

AB227 contains a resolution that begins: “WHEREAS, Unlike the eastern states that received dominion over their lands upon joining the Union, the western states have been placed in an inferior position as a result of the Federal Government withholding a significant portion of land from those states as a condition of admission to the Union …”

There is a bit of an historic flaw in that statement. Actually, some Western states have successfully petitioned to acquire for themselves tracts of federal land, arguing:

“It is of pressing moment that the public lands should become the property of their citizens, with the least delay compatible with the national interest. …

“If these lands are to be withheld from sale, which is the effect of the present system, in vain may the People of these States expect the advantages of well settled neighborhoods, so essential to the education of youth, and to the pleasures of social intercourse, and the advantages of religious instruction. Those States will, for many generations, without some change, be retarded in endeavors to increase their comfort and wealth …

“When these States stipulated not to tax the lands of the United States until they were sold, they rested upon the implied engagement of Congress to cause them to be sold, within a reasonable time. No just equivalent has been given those States for a surrender of an attribute of sovereignty so important to their welfare, and to an equal standing with the original States.”

Those “Western” states, as they were called at the time, were Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida. The year was 1828. The argument became known as the Equal Footing Doctrine.

The petition apparently was successful. Today various federal agencies control the use of roughly half the 11 westernmost states in the lower 48 and Alaska, while only 4 percent of the rest of the states is under federal dominion.

So, Obama will not tolerate the kind of behavior found at the IRS … or the EPA?

Every organism — microbe, insect, fish, animal, family, company, mob, bureaucracy, political party, administration — has as its primary function self-preservation. When a limb gets caught in a trap, it gets chewed off so that the rest of the organism may survive.

On Wednesday Obama chewed off and spat out his temporary head of the IRS, whose posting was due to end in June anyway, for getting caught making life miserable for conservatives.

Now the question is whether he will do the same with his nominee to head the EPA, Gina McCarthy, who has been an assistant administrator to current EPA head Lisa Jackson.

Gina McCarthy (AP photo)

The Competitive Enterprise Institute revealed Wednesday that the EPA has been making life miserable for conservatives.

The conservative-leaning CEI found that, when the EPA was asked for public records under the Freedom of Information Act, liberal groups were given quicker access and had their fees waived more often. From January 2012 to this Spring, CEI found “green” groups — such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and EarthJustice — had their fees waived in 75 out of 82 cases, but CEI’s requests for fee waivers were denied in 14 of 15 cases.

Green pressure groups encountered a cooperative EPA 92 percent of the time, CEI found, while its requests were rejected more than 93 percent of the time.

CEI reported that conservative Judicial Watch and the National Center for Public Policy Research were denied two out of four times, while the Franklin Center had its only two requests denied and the Institute for Energy Research was denied in its only request.

Liberal media outlets also fared better. National Public Radio had seven requests graned. ProPublica had all three granted. The Nation and InsideClimateNews had all requests granted.

Will Obama withdraw McCarthy’s nomination since she has been a part of an organization that has engaged in intolerable behavior?

The Wall Street Journal notes that the EPA denied some of CEI’s requests because CEI “failed to demonstrate that the release of the information requested significantly increases the public understanding of government operations or activities.” I would say the actions of the IRS and the EPA significantly increases the public’s understanding of government activities in this administration, from top to bottom, from Benghazi to Ohio, from The Associated Press to ProPublica.

“This is as clear an example of disparate treatment as the IRS’ hurdles selectively imposed upon groups with names ominously reflecting an interest in, say, a less intrusive or biased federal government,” said CEI Senior Fellow Christopher Horner. “This demonstrates a clear pattern of favoritism for allied groups and a concerted campaign to make life more difficult for those deemed unfriendly. The left hand of big government reaches out to its far-left hand at every turn. Argue against more of the same, however, and prepare to be treated as if you have fewer rights.”

Harry tops even his usual linguistic contortions this week

Harry Reid is a walking, talking, brightly glowing example of muddled and utterly non sequitur thinking. Every time he opens his mouth he commits felonious assault on logic and reason, snatching conclusions out of the static.

During one his most recent fulminations, Reid rhetorically asked, “Where was (Republican) outrage when groups from the other side were under attack?” He specifically mentioned IRS probes during the Bush administration of the NAACP, Greenpeace and the All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, Calif. “What the IRS did was inexcusable but this is not the first time we have seen this,” Reid was quoted as saying.

All three of those probes were initiated by complaints filed with the IRS that the groups were violating their tax-exempt status by engaging in partisan politics or, in the case of Greenpeace, money laundering. After several years, far too long admittedly, all three were cleared. Should the IRS have simply ignored those complaints in Harry’s universe?

Harry Reid on Tuesday. (AP Photo)

It was the IRS that initiated its overly exhaustive questioning of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status while green lighting liberal groups.

The same IRS leaked confidential IRS applications — including the names of donors — to the liberal ProPublica so it could write exposés on how those groups were misleading the IRS about their political activities.

But it is all the same to Harry.

He also reached the bizarre conclusion that if was the fault of Republicans who blocked passage of the DISCLOSE Act, which would have required private groups to disclose their donors. So, Congress refuses to pass a law Harry wants, that makes it OK for the IRS to do the disclosing? That’s like it is OK for Obama to issue an executive order banning the deportation of illegal immigrants who were brought into the country at a young age because Congress refused to pass the DREAM Act. (In April, a judge ruled Homeland Security “does not have discretion to refuse to initiate removal proceedings” of certain illegal immigrants, but — as with the rulings about the illegal Gulf drilling moratorium, the illegal “non-recess” appointments, the illegal ObamaCare and No Child Left Behind waivers — that’s being ignored by Obama, the press and Harry.)

Reid was quoted as saying “there are shadowy political groups masquerading as social welfare organizations in order to solicit anonymous donations,” which under the laws passed by Congress is legal, but the IRS apparently writes its own laws.

Then Reid said of the questions raised about the lies and cavalier attitude about protecting Americans in Benghazi: “This is about smear politics and nothing else.”

And when Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the ambassador to the U.N. were lying about the attack being a demonstation over a video that got out of hand, that was just politics to assure the president’s re-election in spite of his claiming to have al Qaida on the run. That’s OK by Harry. Nor should there be any concern about why a rescue attempt was never made during a seven-hour attack.

Reid also criticized the Department of Justice for grabbing phone records of Associated Press reporters during an investigation of a national security leak involving a foiled plot to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner. “It is inexcusable and there is no way to justify it,” he said of Justice taking the records. (I can’t help but wonder if the real reason for the probe is that it was not the CIA that foiled the plot but MI6, and the leak endangered an MI6 operative.)

This is the same Harry Reid who has been paying lip service to a reporters shield law for years but has somehow has been able to even bring it up for a vote. In 2008 the New York Times quoted a Reid spokesperson as saying: “It is on our to-do list, and we hope to get to it as soon as we can.”

Watch Harry babble on here.

But this might be the dim bulb moment of the week:

Harry should do more walking and less talking.

If Dems want more revenue for schools, cut spending

The Democrats in Carson City have rolled out their wish list of new taxes they want to impose in order to raise more money to spend on public schools.

Sort of like faith in the idea that more spending of your money will improve the public schools.

First they came up with an 8 percent tax on all entertainment admissions — movie tickets, concerts, plays, dance, sporting events, golf outings, strip clubs — that they said might raise $50 million though that is a ballpark guess, so to speak.

Now they want to jack up the job-killing payroll tax, especially on mining, and say it might raise $255 million, if there are any jobs left to tax.

Even Republicans have a plan to tax mining that they say would raise $300 million.

Nevada State Education Association already has an initiative that will appear on the November 2014 ballot to tax mining and raising what they say will be $800 million.

The stories are unclear as to whether those figures are annual or biennial, like the general fund budget.

But no one is even talking about cutting spending and using that money for education — as futile as that might be.

You see bills that would have reformed the public employee pension program and partially repealed the prevailing wage law never got out of committee, never got a vote and one never got a hearing in committees headed by Democrats who say they want to increase public education funding.

Repealing the prevailing wage law alone would save at least a half a billion dollars a year.

But, no, they’d rather continue to waste money they get now and add more of your money to waste in the future.

This chart from the Cato Institute shows how effective increased education spending has been thus far:

How would Harry like to have 10 Ted Cruzes to contend with?

The Wall Street Journal’s front page feature article today carries the amusing healine: “The Yellow Prose of Texas? Secession Movement Blooms in Fiction: Alternate-History Authors Explore Putting The ‘Lone’ Back in the Lone Star State.”

For instance:

“‘The Secession of Texas’ by Darrell Maloney of San Antonio envisions an independent Texas with its own border patrol, guarding against people trying to sneak into the country illegally — from Oklahoma.”

While the story points out that nobody of any consequence, including the authors of the several novels cited, is all too serious about Texas seceding from the Union, it fails to address a little known aspect of history contained in the resolution admitting Texas as a state in 1845, after having been an independent nation since the defeat of Santa Anna’s Mexico army in 1836.

This reads:

“New States, of convenient size, not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas, and having sufficient population, may hereafter, by the consent of the said State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the federal constitution.”

Yes, Texas could break into five separate states. What makes this prospect all the more tantalizing is imagining how Harry Reid would contend with 10 Ted Cruzes.