Newspaper column: Should each county get a single state senator?

 

Republican Sen. Pete Goicoechea is the District 19 incumbent and was not up for re-election this year.

The blue Clark County tail wagged the red Nevada dog in this past week’s election.

Election results show rural and urban Nevada are of two vastly different states of mind.

For example, in the race for the U.S. Senate, Democrat Jacky Rosen carried only Clark and Washoe counties, while Republican incumbent Dean Heller won every other county handily. In the more heavily unionized, redistribution-favoring and thus Democrat-leaning Clark and Washoe, Rosen gleaned 55 and 50 percent of the votes, respectively. Whereas, for example, in Elko County Heller netted 76 percent of the vote, 72 percent in White Pine, 79 percent in Lincoln, 75 percent in Esmeralda, 63 percent in Storey, 72 percent in Churchill, 79 percent in Lincoln and a whopping 84 percent in tiny Eureka. Quite a spectrum shift.

The state’s only Republican representative in Washington now will be Mark Amodei, whose 2nd Congressional District covers the northern half of the state and excludes Clark. Amodei won in every county and his Democratic opponent only came within spitting distance in Washoe and Carson City. Amodei took Elko with 80 percent of the vote, Humboldt with 79 percent and Lander with 82 percent, for example.

Republican Cresent Hardy won in every county in the 4th Congressional District in the southern half of the state except Clark, while the other two Congressional Districts are solely in Clark and were easily won by Democrats.

Democrat Steven Horsford won the 4th District seat by pulling 52 percent of the total vote by netting 56 percent in the more populous Clark. Hardy netted 73 percent of White Pine’s votes, 80 percent of Lincoln’s votes, 74 percent of Lyon’s, 57 percent of Mineral’s and 65 percent of Lyon’s.

In the statewide races for constitutional offices the numbers broke down largely the same.

In the race for governor, Democrat Steve Sisolak won handily in Clark and eked out a victory in Washoe, while Republican Adam Laxalt won almost every other county by at least 2-to-1. The results were similar in the race for lieutenant governor.

Incumbent Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske edged out 30-year-old inexperienced Democrat Nelson Araujo by less than 1 percentage point, though she won handily in ever county except, you guessed it, Clark.

In the race for attorney general, Republican Wes Duncan won in every county, repeat after me, except Clark. Likewise for Republican treasurer candidate Bob Beers, while incumbent Republican Controller Ron Knecht lost only in Clark and Washoe. Again, in mosts cases the margins in rural counties exceeded 2-to-1 for the Republican.

The Democrats in the state Assembly are all from Clark and Washoe. The rest of the state picked Republicans. Due to the overwhelming population of Clark and Washoe, there is now a supermajority of Democrats — 29 out of 42.

The state Senate is also all red except for Clark and Washoe. The 13 Democrats to eight Republicans leaves the Democrats one seat short of a supermajority. That could happen if a planned recount changes the outcome in a district in Clark in which the Republican won by 28 ballots.

It takes a supermajority in both the Assembly and Senate to pass tax increases, thanks to an initiative pushed through by former Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons.

Now, if the Democrats can wail about how unfair it is that the 2016 presidential election was determined by the Electoral College — in which each state gets a vote for each representative in Congress, which is determined by population, and each state gets two votes for each senator no matter population — and not by popular vote, which, yes, Hillary Clinton and not Donald Trump won, it seems only fair that we be allowed to deign to suggest that Nevada could change its governing bodies to more closing match the federal system created by the Founders.

We could have an Assembly in which representatives are seated from districts of approximately equal population and a state Senate with a single representative from each county. The whole purpose of the U.S. Senate is to assure smaller states are not run over roughshod by more populous states.

So why should the smaller Nevada counties with differing philosophies and priorities and issues be virtually shut out of the decision making process?

Of course, the chances of that ever happening is almost certainly nil. So, consider this a wee Jeremiadic cry from the desert and a whisper in the ears of the near-supermajority to give some slack for the smaller rural counties. Seems only fair. And we know Democrats are sticklers for fairness.

A version of this column appeared this week in many of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel and the Lincoln County Record — and the Elko Daily Free Press.

Historic update from Wikipedia:

In 1919 the Senate started a practice called “Little Federalism,” where each county received one member of the Nevada Senate regardless of population of said county. This set the Senate membership at seventeen which lasted until 1965-1967. The Supreme Court of the United States issued the opinion in Baker v. Carr in 1962 which found that the redistricting of state legislative districts are not a political questions, and thus is justiciable by the federal courts. In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court heard Reynolds v. Sims and struck down state senate inequality, basing their decision on the principle of “one person, one vote.” With those two cases being decided on a national level, Nevada Assemblywoman Flora Dungan and Las Vegas resident Clare W. Woodbury, M.D. filed suit in 1965 with the Nevada District Court arguing that Nevada’s Senate districts violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States and lacked of fair representation and proportional districts. At the time, less than 8 percent of the population of the State of Nevada controlled more than 50 percent of the Senate. The District Court found that both the Senate and the Assembly apportionment laws were “invidiously discriminatory, being based upon no constitutionally valid policy.^[7]” It was ordered that Governor Grant Sawyer call a Special Session to submit a constitutionally valid reapportionment plan.^[8] The 11th Special Session lasted from October 25, 1965 through November 13, 1965 and a plan was adopted to increase the size of the Senate from 17 to 20.

Newspaper column: These are the best choices to send to Washington

It is vital for rural Nevada that we send representatives to Washington who will defend us from the encroachment of the federal bureaucracies.

When it comes to the race for the Senate seat, the choice is obvious. Republican Sen. Dean Heller knows rural Nevada and what its residents need to survive and prosper.

His opponent — one-term Democratic representative Jacky Rosen — would modify the Trump tax cuts, block the nomination of conservative judges and justices, bar the use of public lands, push socialized medicine, big government spending and generally side with the radical left that is so entrenched in Washington.

Heller would continue to work to create jobs and improve the economy.

“As a lifelong Nevadan and rancher, I am fighting hard to ensure that Nevadans have access to our public lands for multiple-use purposes such as grazing, economic development, and recreation,” Heller says on his campaign website. “Without a doubt, the federal government owns too much land in the West. Because 87 percent of Nevada’s land is managed by the federal government, I believe Congress should transfer some of our lands to the state and local governments.”

Heller also promises to work to responsibly develop energy resources on public lands to keep fuel prices low.

He also opposes the government takeover of health care, saying, “Now, Obamacare is costing jobs, stifling economic growth in our nation, and the cost of care has increased.”

The Republican senator also has a track record of pushing for border security and immigration reform.

“Big government is not the answer to fixing our economy,” Heller warns. “Congress needs to control wasteful spending and shrink the size of government. Adopting pro-growth policies that expand tax relief across the board and allow Americans to keep more of what they earn will lead to job creation and economic prosperity in the future. Capitalism is the foundation of America’s prosperity. We should embrace these principles, not run from them.”

As for the candidates for the House of Representatives for rural Nevada, Republicans Mark Amodei and Cresent Hardy are the clear choices.

Amodei has represented the 2nd Congressional District in northern Nevada since 2011.

His Democratic opponent Clint Koble opposes selling public land and advocates reinstating ObamaCare and expanding Medicaid. Koble bemoans what he calls a wealth gap and claims the tax cuts have not benefited workers and “its worst provisions should be reversed.” He also favors instant background checks of all gun sales and promotes expensive renewable energy boondoggles.

Amodei is a strong defender of the right to keep and bear arms. He has sponsored bills that encourage economic development in rural counties.

“A significant issue for Nevadans, which dovetails with economic growth, is public land management. I believe that it is possible to leverage our natural resources in an economically and environmentally responsible way,” Amodei relates on his campaign website. “As a member of the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, I am advancing legislation to strengthen local control over the federal lands, which compromise more than 85 percent of the state. I think that local communities should be able to decide for themselves the best uses for public lands to spur economic growth.”

The congressman was a strong supporter of the tax cuts bill and advocates legislation to undo the worst problems with ObamaCare.

Republican Cresent Hardy is seeking a return to southern Nevada’s 4th Congressional District seat, which he won in 2014 by defeating incumbent Democrat Steven Horsford but lost in 2016 to Democrat Ruben Kihuen, who is not running for re-election after being accused of sexual harassment. Horsford is the Democrat nominee again this year.

Hardy is the clear choice for southern Nevada.

One of the starkest differences between Hardy and Horsford is on health care. Horsford backs ObamaCare and has said he favors transitioning to the socialized medicine proposal known as Medicare-for-all being pushed by socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“Management of healthcare policy at the state level would help to mitigate fraud and abuse, while ensuring that each state develops programs that best suit the needs of their residents,” Hardy says on his campaign website. “A one-size-fits-all approach does not work on an issue as complex as healthcare coverage. Reform is needed. However, the ACA (Affordable Care Act or ObamaCare) is far over-reaching, expensive, and detrimental to our fragile economy.”

Horsford supports raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, while Hardy opposes it as harmful to small businesses and to younger unskilled workers.

Hardy favors state and local control of public lands, while Horsford opposes this.

A version of this column appeared this week in many of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel and the Lincoln County Record — and the Elko Daily Free Press.

Editorial: Western congressmen seek monument size reductions

Recently the 17 members of the Congressional Western Caucus — which includes Nevada’s Rep. Mark Amodei — took Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke up on his request for feedback on what to do about all the national monuments created in the past two decades, sending him a letter with specific recommendations about 27 of those monuments.

These recommendations called for vastly scaling back the size of two monuments created by President Obama in his last year in office at the urging of then-Sen. Harry Reid — the 300,000-acre Gold Butte in Clark County and the 700,000-acre Basin and Range in Nye and Lincoln counties.

The letter repeatedly points out that the Antiquities Act of 1906, which authorizes the president to create monuments, was passed in order to protect prehistoric and Indian ruins and artifacts on federal land in the West and the law limits such designations to “the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects.” While earlier monuments averaged 422 acres, several of Obama’s designations exceeded a million acres, the letter notes.

Zinke’s review of the monuments comes at the behest of President Trump, who in April asked for the review in an executive order, giving Zinke till Aug. 26 to comply. Zinke was scheduled to be in Nevada this week to discuss the matter.

As for Basin and Range, the congressmen point out it is larger than Rhode Island and was created as “a personal favor to then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. According to a former Obama adviser, ‘it is only due to Harry Reid that [Basin and Range] is getting done.’”

The letter quotes opposition to the monument from the Nevada Farm Bureau, as well as Lincoln and Nye County commissioners.

Nye County Commissioner Lorinda Wichman called the monument “an excellent example of hypocrisy,” noting that Reid insisted on local consent for the construction of a nuclear waste repository in Nye County at Yucca Mountain, which many in Nye favor, while ignoring the lack of local consent for Basin and Range, which many opposed because of its impact on recreation, grazing and mineral exploration.

The letter also points out that one of the motives for creating Basin and Range was to provide a buffer for an “art” project on a strip of private land, which has nothing to do with protecting antiquities.

According to a Washington Post article in 2015, Reid, who for two years could not get Congress to go along with his proposal to put the land off limits, asked Obama to create a national monument partly as a buffer for a giant earthen and concrete art project called “City” and described as “reminiscent of a ceremonial Mesoamerican city stretching across an expanse of desert nearly the size of the Mall” in Washington. The “artist” has been working on it for 50 years and allows only VIP visitors and journalists to view his work.

Though both Amodei and then-Rep. Cresent Hardy, in whose districts the monument is located, opposed it, Reid persuaded Obama, who owed him a favor or two for such things as ObamaCare and ending the filibuster for judicial nominations.
The caucus letter recommends the monument be reduced to about 2,500 acres — “the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”

As for Gold Butte, the letter notes the designation specifically bans grazing and suggests it was “political retribution” against the Bundy family, whose cattle have grazed in the area for more than a century. Cliven Bundy and four of his sons are currently in jail awaiting trial on charges growing out of an armed standoff in 2014 when BLM agents attempted to confiscate their cattle.

In January, Amodei and Sen. Dean Heller introduced the Nevada Land Sovereignty Act, which intends to prevent the threat of executive action designating or expanding national monuments without congressional approval or local support.

Neither monument needs to be so large.

A version of this editorial appeared this week in some of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel,  Sparks Tribune and the Lincoln County Record.

Gold Butte (BLM pix)

 

Western congressmen seek reduction in size of national monuments

Two weeks ago the 17 members of the Congressional Western Caucus — which includes Nevada’s Rep. Mark Amodei — took Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke up on his request for feedback on what to do about all the national monuments created in the past two decades, sending him a letter with specific recommendations about 27 of those monuments.

These recommendations called for vastly scaling back the size of two monuments created by President Obama in his last year in office at the urging of then Sen. Harry Reid — the 300,000-acre Gold Butte in Clark County and the 700,000-acre Basin and Range in Nye and Lincoln counties.

The letter repeatedly points out that the Antiquities Act of 1906, which authorizes the president to create monuments, was passed in order to protect prehistoric and Indian ruins and artifacts on federal land in the West and the law limits such designations to “the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects.” While earlier monuments averaged 422 acres, several of Obama’s designations exceeded a million acres, the letter notes.

Zinke’s review of the monuments comes at the behest of President Trump, who in April asked for the review in an executive order, giving Zinke till Aug. 26 to comply.

As for Basin and Range, the congressmen point out it is larger than Rhode Island and was created as “a personal favor to then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. According to a former Obama adviser, ‘it is only due to Harry Reid that [Basin and Range] is getting done.'”

The letter quotes opposition to the monument from the Nevada Farm Bureau, as well as Lincoln and Nye County commissioners.

Nye County Commissioner Lorinda Wichman called the monument “an excellent example of hypocrisy,” noting that Reid insisted on local consent for the construction of a nuclear waste repository in Nye County at Yucca Mountain, which many in Nye favor, while ignoring the lack of local consent for Basin and Range, which many opposed because of its impact on recreation, grazing and mineral exploration.

The letter also points out that one of the motives for creating Basin and Range was to provide a buffer for an “art” project on a strip of private land, which has nothing to do with protecting antiquities.

A view of “City,” artist Michael Heizer’s monumental work of land art in the Nevada desert. (Tom Vinetz / Triple Aught Foundation / LACMA via LA Times)

According to a Washington Post article in 2015, Reid, who for two years could not get Congress to go along with his proposal to put the land off limits, asked Obama to create a national monument partly as a buffer for a giant earthen and concrete art project called “city” and described as “reminiscent of a ceremonial Mesoamerican city stretching across an expanse of desert nearly the size of the Mall” in Washington. The “artist” has been working on it for 50 years and allows only VIP visitors and journalists to view his work.

“Explain it to me,” the paper quoted Reid quoting Obama.

“I can’t,” Reid said he replied.

Though both Amodei and then-Rep. Cresent Hardy, in whose districts the monument is located, opposed it, Reid persuaded Obama, who owed him a favor or two for such things as ObamaCare and ending the filibuster for judicial nominations.

The WaPo story ends thusly:

“This was on nobody’s radar screen, and it certainly wasn’t part of the plan,” said one person close to the president who has been involved in the discussions. When the question of possible controversy was broached, Obama said: “I don’t care. I want this done.”

Reid visited (Michael) Heizer’s art installation and its remote environs in 2007. He said he went “to check off a box.” But the visit changed him. “I became a convert. … You have this magnificent work of art that this man spent half a century working on. And that’s quite a story.”

The caucus letter recommends the monument be reduced to about 2,500 acres — “the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”

As for Gold Butte, the letter notes the designation specifically bans grazing and suggests it was “political retribution” against the Bundy family, whose cattle have grazed in the area for more than a century. Cliven Bundy and four of his sons are currently in jail awaiting trial on charges growing out of an armed standoff in 2014 when BLM agents attempted to confiscate their cattle.

Gov. Brian Sandoval said the monument designation bypassed Congress and the public.

In January, Amodei and Sen. Dean Heller introduced the Nevada Land Sovereignty Act, which intends to prevent the threat of executive action designating or expanding national monuments without Congressional approval or local support.

“Whether you agree with our proposals or not, I have always supported a public and transparent process which includes input from interest groups, local communities, and elected representatives,”Amodei said at the time. “Unlike all of our Nevada lands bills that allow stakeholders an opportunity to voice their concerns and ultimately reach a consensus agreement that achieves bipartisan support, the Obama Administration has repeatedly bypassed Congress and local input.”

Heller said, “Late last month, without even having a say in the matter, Nevadans witnessed the executive branch quickly lock up hundreds of thousands of acres of local, public land with an effortless stroke of the pen. No matter which political party is occupying the White House, these types of unilateral federal land grabs by the executive branch should not be allowed.”

The caucus letter quotes former Rep. Hardy as stating: “If you want to protect the petroglyphs, and you want to designate that as the monument, that’s what the Antiquities Act was set up to do, is protect the minimum possible footprint of that of what you’re trying to designate. Not an extra 300,000 acres on top of the 50-100 acres that you could have protected.”

The letter itself did not state any specific size for Basin and Range.

In concluding remarks, the congressmen argue: “The Antiquities Act of 1906 is broken and in desperate need of reform. No one person should be able to unilaterally lock-up millions of acres of public land from multiple-use with the stroke of a pen. Local stakeholders deserve to have a voice on public land-use decisions that impact their livelihoods.”

BLM pix

Newspaper column: Whither the state’s effort to take control of public lands?

In March 2015 Congressman Mark Amodei, who represents northern Nevada, introduced H.R. 1484, dubbed the Honor the Nevada Enabling Act of 1864 Act, which, if passed, would require the Departments of Agriculture and Interior to convey to Nevada a portion of the federal public lands they now control and thus partly fulfill an implied promise do so when Nevada became a state 152 years ago.

The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources finally got around to conducting a hearing on the bill this past week, though Amodei had been seeking such a hearing for more than a year. The subcommittee took no vote and Amodei is under no illusion the bill has a chance of passage in this session of Congress.

The bill calls for the federal government to transfer ownership of 7.2 million acres of public land to the state in its first phase and about 10 million acres in a subsequent phase. That would still leave the feds controlling about 70 percent of Nevada’s land mass, but down from the current 87 percent, the most of any state.

Testifying in favor of the bill was Elko County Commissioner Demar Dahl, who chaired a year-long study of the land transfer proposal by the Nevada Land Management Task Force.

Demar Dahl testifies before House subcommittee.

“I had an opportunity to meet with President-elect (Donald) Trump in August,” Dahl said in his opening remarks. “I said, ‘If you had a hotel with 10 floors on it and eight of those floors were controlled by a bureaucracy that you had virtually no control over that was over 2,000 miles away, how would that work?’

“And he said, ‘I think that you’re actually closer to 90 percent owned and controlled in the state of Nevada by the federal government than you are to 80.’ And that’s true — 87 percent of the state of Nevada is owned and controlled by the federal government.”

The task force Dahl headed up was created by the state Legislature in 2013 and consisted of one member of every county commission in the state, 17 in all.

At their first meeting Dahl said he asked the members whether they thought at the time it was a good idea to transfer land to the state, and more than half said it was not a good idea or they were not sure.

Over the next year the task force met 13 times to hear testimony from state agencies, the Farm Bureau, the Sierra Club, various sportsman groups and other stakeholders.

“As we went through the year I could see the lights come on of all of the members and by the time we finished every member was supporting the transfer of the public lands,” said Dahl, a rancher.

An economic analysis contracted by the task force found that the state could expect a net revenue of $350 million a year from controlling the land.

All 17 county commissions voted to support the land transfer effort and in 2015 the proposal passed both houses of the Legislature and resulted in H.R. 1484.

“On the issue of transferring the public lands we discovered that there is more among the residents of the state that unites us than divides us. For the sportsmen, the environmental community and resource users there’s much that we can agree on,” Dahl told the subcommittee. “For instance, 1484 calls for the transfer of all valid existing rights and uses. If you can hunt, fish, camp, graze or prospect on the public lands now, you will be able do it after the transfer.”

No parks, monuments, military or Indian land would be transferred.

Subcommittee Chairman Doug Lamborn of Colorado said to Dahl that people in other parts of the country think residents of the West don’t care about the federal lands, that states would allow a few more barrels of oil to be tapped under a world-class trout stream and the people on either coast need to tell us what to do.

Dahl replied, “My question would be: Why would the people who live there and care for the land, who are able to use it more than anyone else, even though after the transfer people from all over the world will continue to be able to use it, but why would the people of Nevada care less about the land and care less about preserving it for their children, their children’s children and for generations to come?”

Two of the bill’s co-sponsors — Republican Joe Heck and Cresent Hardy — were defeated in the recent election. Where will their Democrat replacements stand on this bill?

A version of this column appeared this week in many of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel and the Lincoln County Record — and the Elko Daily Free Press.

 

Newspaper column: In Nevada election the tail wags the dog

Welcome to the state of Clark.

The land mass that is Clark County was added to Nevada three years after statehood, carved from a corner of Arizona. It was a part of Lincoln County until 1909, when the Legislature split off Clark County.

Clark dangles on the map like a vestigial tail on the nether region of Nevada.

On Election Day 2016, the tail wagged the dog.

This past week 1.1 million Nevadans cast presidential ballots, fully 68 percent of those were cast in Clark County — and there was a stark difference in how Clark voted compared to the rest of the state.

Only in Clark County did a majority vote for the Democratic Senate candidate. Thus it was for much of the ballot.

In the presidential contest alone the difference was a spectrum shift from bright Democratic blue in Clark to crimson Republican red just about everywhere else in the state.

While Democrat Hillary Clinton beat out Republican nominee Donald Trump statewide by about 36,000 votes, she bested him in Clark by more than 80,000 ballots, while he out polled her in the rest of the state by 55,000 votes, according to Secretary of State tabulations.

The only other Nevada county Clinton won was urban Washoe and that by only 2,500 votes out of more than 190,000 cast there. In other counties Trump won largely by margins exceeding 2-to-1 and in Lincoln County by 6-to-1.

Meanwhile, in the senatorial race to fill the vacancy being left by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s retirement, Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto won statewide, but the only county she won was Clark. She won statewide by about 2 percentage points or 26,000 votes, but won by 80,000 votes in Clark. Republican Joe Heck, who gave up his Congressional District 3 seat to run for the Senate, won every other county, some by more than 4-to-1. Excluding Clark, Heck won the remainder of Nevada by more than 55,000 votes.

Nearly 4 percent of Nevadans chose “none of these candidates” in the Senate race.

In the 4th Congressional District — which includes part of northern Clark County, the southern part of Lyon County and all of White Pine, Nye, Mineral, Esmeralda, and Lincoln counties — Democrat Ruben Kihuen won districtwide by nearly 10,000 votes but won in Clark by about 24,000.

Incumbent Republican Cresent Hardy won every other county, all by about 2-to-1 or more.

After the dust settles, Nevada switches from having four out of its six Washington delegates being Republicans to four being Democrats.

Democrats won all save one of the Clark County state Senate seats up for grabs, giving the Democrats an 11-10 majority in Carson City, instead of the previous 11-10 GOP edge.

Republicans won every rural Assembly seat, while Democrats carried most races in Clark and Washoe, giving Democrats a 27-15 majority, instead of the previous Republican majority.

The gun grabbing Question 1 ballot initiative requiring background checks for almost every gun purchase or gift passed by 100,000 votes in Clark, but failed in every other county, often with 80 to 90 percent voting no.

Question 2, legalization of pot, passed only in Clark, Washoe, Nye and Story, but narrowly won statewide due to Clark’s numbers.

In 2014 Nevada experienced a red shift, when Republicans won all six statewide elective offices — governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, treasurer, controller, attorney general — as well as majorities in both houses of the Legislature.

The 2016 reversal of fortune was probably best explained by a little-circulated Associated Press story that appeared about a week before the election. It described how the Las Vegas Culinary union was busing thousands of casino housekeepers and staffers to early voting sites just off the Las Vegas Strip, “speaking in Spanish as they clutched pocket-sized brochures listing candidates endorsed by the powerful Culinary union.”

The union bused workers during their paid lunch break and handed them boxed lunches for the ride back to work.

The story went on to report that the union had registered 34,000 members to vote, had reassigned 150 members to full-time political work, planned to knock on 200,000 doors and place phone calls to co-workers.

There is talk in California since the election of Trump about secession from the Union. Anyone think Clark County should go with them?

A version of this column appeared this week in many of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel and the Lincoln County Record — and the Elko Daily Free Press.

Editorial: Rural Nevadans need to protect interest in Washington

Hardy, Amodei and Heck on floor of U.S. House (Lisa Helfert photo for R-J)

We cannot emphasize this enough: It is vital for rural Nevadans to turn out next Tuesday and send three conservative Republicans back to Washington for the sake of our economy and our liberty.

Reps. Joe Heck, Cresent Hardy and Mark Amodei already have been fighting for rural Nevada in Congress this past session, working against efforts by the administration to limit agriculture, mining, oil and gas exploration and recreation over misguided efforts to protect sage grouse and wild horses, as well as take control of all water resources and impose draconian carbon emission limits.

Rep. Heck, who currently represents southern Clark County, is seeking to take over Harry Reid’s Senate seat, while Hardy and Amodei are seeking re-election in their House districts.

Heck will be on all ballots statewide, while Hardy will be on the ballots in part of northern Clark County, the southern part of Lyon County and all of White Pine, Nye, Mineral, Esmeralda, and Lincoln counties, and Amodei will appear on ballots in northern Lyon county and all of Douglas, Carson City, Storey, Washoe, Humboldt, Pershing, Churchill, Lander, Eureka and Elko counties.

All three face Democratic opponents who have expressed a disdain for rural Nevadans being able to better control our destinies by having a greater voice in the use of the land — 86 percent of which in Nevada is controlled by the various federal land agencies that treat locals like serfs.

Heck’s Senate race opponent is former Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, handpicked by Reid to be his Democratic successor. She has been endorsed by the Sierra Club. Yes, the Sierra Club, which praised her for “protecting Nevada’s vast and unique public lands,” meaning protecting it from productive use by hardworking Nevadans.

”The Sierra Club shares my priorities of protecting and preserving Nevada’s public lands for future generations and I’m honored to have their support in my campaign to be Nevada’s next senator,” Cortez Masto said of the endorsement.

Hardy’s Democratic opponent is state Sen. Ruben Kihuen, who said in a recent statement, “Overwhelmingly, Nevadans across party lines understand that keeping public lands in public hands grows our state’s economy, improves our quality of life and supports outdoor recreation opportunities.” Otherwise, the topic of public lands did not rise to the level of concern to even be addressed on Kihuen’s website as a campaign issue.

Amodei’s opponent is liberal Democrat Chip Evans, who states unequivocally on his campaign website: “I acknowledge that federal lands in Nevada are not and never have been the property of the state.” And, “The state of Nevada is incapable of undertaking the responsibilities and expenses associated with managing public lands.” And, “In general, I oppose the selling of public lands to private parties as this is a finite resource for the public and is virtually irreversible.”

He also supports the EPA’s effort to usurp control of every mud puddle in the country and also wants to heap further regulations and restrictions on the mining industry.

This newspaper unabashedly endorses the election of Heck, Hardy and Amodei.

A version of this editorial appeared this week in some of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel,  Sparks Tribune and the Lincoln County Record.

Congressional flier takes the prize for most mendacious ad this year

Kihuen flier

Warning: Going to the mailbox this election season can cause whiplash.

I did a double take when I grabbed a flier this week touting the candidacy of Ruben Kihuen for the 4th Congressional District. No, it was actually “targeting” the candidacy of incumbent Cresent Hardy more than anything else.

I nominate the flier for the most mendacious political ad of the year. It connects dots that aren’t even in the same galaxy. Above and below a police mugshot of Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy are the words: “This man’s armed standoff led to the deaths of two Las Vegas police officers and he’s supported by Congressman Hardy.”

On the obverse side the flier makes the unmitigated claim: “Bundy led an armed standoff with police and, when it was over, two of Bundy’s supporters assassinated two Las Vegas police officers.”

The flier attempts to connect the ambush slaying of two Las Vegas police officers two months after the standoff by a couple of leftist, anti-authoritarian lunatics who showed up at the Bundy ranch standoff with BLM agents but were told by the Bundys to leave because of their “very radical” views.

The couple also showed up at a left-leaning march in Lafayette, Ind., the previous November, according to a CBS affiliate in Chicago.

While living in Lafayette, Jerad Miller and his wife Amanda took part in the “Million Mask March,” a gathering of protesters from the Occupy movement, anarchists, and hacktivists, the television station reported.

Linking the lunatic Millers with Hardy and/or Bundy is stretching rhetoric beyond the breaking point.

The flier even claims Hardy “stood by” Bundy after he made comments that were labeled as racist, when in fact the very article cited in the fine print as supporting this claim states that Hardy disavowed those remarks.

It was paid for by the Nevada State Democratic Party.

 

 

Newspaper column: Nevada taking lead in challenging new overtime rule

New labor rules being arbitrarily foisted on the private and public sectors by the Obama administration in his final year in office will cost the economy $80 billion — nearly half of that, $33 billion, due to a new rule raising the number of workers who must be paid overtime by 12.5 million — and eliminate 150,000 jobs over the next decade, according to the the National Association of Manufacturers.

Nevada is leading the way in challenging the overtime change that increases the wage floor for executive, administrative and professional (EAP) workers who must be paid time and half for any hours worked in excess of 40 hours from $455 per week to $913 per week, starting on Dec. 1.

Recently Nevada’s three Republican Congressmen Joe Heck, Cresent Hardy and Mark Amodei joined in a near-party-line vote in the House to delay the overtime rule change for six months. Democrat Dina Titus, of course, opposed it. On to the Senate.

But the challenge most likely to be effective is a legal challenge by 21 states in which Nevada is taking the lead — Nevada v. U.S. Department of Labor — which was filed recently in the Eastern District of Texas. In addition to Nevada and Texas, the challenging states are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and Wisconsin.

The suit challenges the new overtime rule as a usurpation of the powers granted Congress by the Constitution and a violation of the Federalism principle embodied in the Tenth Amendment.

Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt said in a press release announcing the litigation, “Longstanding federal law requires an overtime exemption for ‘bona fide executive, administrative, or professional’ employees. Ignoring this federal law, the Department of Labor by executive fiat is forcing state, local and private employers to pay overtime to any employee who earns under a certain amount, regardless of whether that employee is actually performing ‘executive, administrative, or professional’ duties.”

The Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in 1938 and required that workers engaged in interstate commerce be paid a federal minimum wage and overtime for any hours worked in excess of 40 hours a week. It included an exception for “any employee employed in a bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity …”

Later amendments applied the law to all state and local government employees, but in 1976, according to the lawsuit, the Supreme Court ruled the Tenth Amendment limited Congress’s power to impose such rules on the states.

The court backed off that finding a decade later and said, “The political process ensures that laws that unduly burden the States will not be promulgated.”

Au contraire, says the lawsuit, “Subsequent Commerce Clause, Tenth Amendment, and Eleventh Amendment decisions call the continuing validity” of that decision into question.

In March Obama ordered the labor department to change the overtime rule. “Because these regulations are outdated, millions of Americans lack the protections of overtime and even the right to the minimum wage,” his memo said.

Nevada v. Labor spells out the especially onerous burden the overtime rule places on state and local governments, “Because the Plaintiff States cannot reasonably rely upon a corresponding increase in revenue, they will have to reduce or eliminate some essential government services and functions. For example, certain infrastructure and social programs may be reduced or cut. The Plaintiff States’ budgets will have less discretionary funds available because, as result of the new federal overtime rule, a greater percentage of their funds will be devoted to employment costs against the States’ will. These changes will have a substantial impact on the lives and well-being of the Citizens of the Plaintiff States,” adding that private employers will suffer the same ill effects.

The plaintiffs note that the Supreme Court tossed out as unconstitutional a provision in ObamaCare that required states to expand Medicaid coverage, calling that “economic dragooning” — an apt comparison.

The press release accompanying the lawsuit quoted the Nevada Resort Association, whose members employ nearly a third of Nevada workers and provide almost half the state’s tax revenue, as saying, “By nearly doubling the threshold amount for exempt employees, the regulation results in abrupt increases in taxes and labor costs. Such dramatic increases are particularly difficult to manage in an industry with tens of thousands of employees and in which labor costs are a significant percentage of total expenses.”

The courts and Congress can’t act quickly enough to fend off this job and economy killing move by Obama.

A version of this column appeared this week in many of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel and the Lincoln County Record — and the Elko Daily Free Press.

Editorial: Rural residents being harmed by health care changes

From the beginning under ObamaCare rural residents throughout the nation have had fewer choices for health care coverage and have been charged considerably higher premiums than those in urban areas.

As insurers flee the ObamaCare market there is even less competition and still higher rates.

It has reached the point that in 2017 a majority of Nevada counties — Esmeralda, Mineral, Humboldt, Pershing, Churchill, Lincoln, White Pine, Eureka, Lander, and Elko — will have only one firm offering coverage under the ObamaCare program.

To ameliorate the blow to residents of single-provider counties nationwide, Nevada Republican Reps. Joe Heck, Mark Amodei and Cresent Hardy a couple of weeks ago introduced a bill that amends the Internal Revenue Code to exempt those residents from the requirement to pay a tax penalty if they fail to maintain minimum health coverage under ObamaCare, or as it is laughably titled, the Affordable Care Act.

Heck is running for the Senate seat being vacated by the retirement of Harry Reid, who rammed through ObamaCare — using deals such as the Cornhusker Kickback and the Louisiana Purchase — without obtaining the vote of a single Republican.

The bill is called Protection from Insurance Exchange Monopolies Act, H.R. 6049. It has been referred to the House Ways and Means Committee.

In the coming year there will be only three companies offering ObamaCare coverage in Nevada — Anthem, Health Plan of Nevada, and Prominence Health Plan (formerly St. Mary’s). In the 10 counties listed above the only carrier option is Anthem.

All three congressmen commented on the necessity of their bill in a press release.

“The better way to solve rural Nevada’s access to health care is to replace Obamacare with a fairer and more patient-centered approach,” Hardy said. “But as long as ObamaCare is the law, Nevadans shouldn’t be forced to pay a tax on a monopoly caused by a government mandate that forced out other competition. All Nevadans, and particularly those in our rural communities, deserve access to more health care choices and lower health care costs.”

“The Affordable Care Act promised Nevadans more healthcare choices and lower costs but, as expected, we now know those promises were empty” Heck said. “Nevadans in 10 counties will be living under an ObamaCare insurance monopoly in 2017 and it is unfair to inflict a penalty tax on residents in counties with only one carrier option. This is yet another example of the failures of the ACA and highlights the urgent need to replace the broken parts of the law with healthcare reforms that actually expand access to quality, affordable care.”

“President Obama promised his healthcare law would bring Americans ‘more choice’, ‘more competition’, and ‘real health care security,’” Amodei said.  “Despite the president’s assurances, ObamaCare has delivered nothing more than higher premiums and less choices – with millions of Americans having even fewer choices in 2017. In Nevada, ObamaCare will soon be leaving residents in 10 counties with only one choice – choose what Washington says is right for them – or pay the penalty. By allowing people who reside in areas with less than two provider options to be exempt from the individual mandate, our bill provides much needed relief to those who have been left with no alternative.”

Repealing ObamaCare is the preferred solution, but this is a worthy patch in the meantime.

Adding further problems for rural communities, in January the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services changed the reimbursement process for medical suppliers. CMS is now using bids from metro areas to start cutting reimbursement rates in rural areas.

But providing care in rural areas can be more expensive due to distances between patients and providers and the time and expense it takes to cover those distances. The Medicare reimbursement rate has been cut by more than 50 percent for many items.

Health care providers are hoping Congress remedies the devastating cuts to Medicare reimbursement rates that are impacting medical suppliers throughout the country. Many providers are cutting services or refusing to take new patients. Some are even closing their doors.

Congress needs to act on both of these problems for rural America.

A version of this editorial appeared this week in some of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel,  Sparks Tribune and the Lincoln County Record.

Where is the nearest doctor?