Newspaper column: National Popular Vote would make Nevada voters irrelevant

The Nevada Assembly voted 23-17 this past week to cut the impact of your presidential vote by at least a third.

Assembly Bill 186 would have Nevada join something called the “Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote.” Instead of awarding Nevada’s six electoral votes — one for each representative and senator in Congress — according to how Nevadans vote, those six electoral votes would be awarded to the president and vice president team that wins the popular vote nationally.

One could say this cuts the value of Nevada’s votes from six to four, since the votes nationwide would be proportional to population. Or one could say it negates our votes entirely since it matters not how we vote.

Not a single Assembly Republican voted for the bill and five Democrats had the good sense to reject this attempt to emasculate the federalist system on which this country was founded.

If only three state Senate Democrats have the temerity to buck their party leadership and reject AB186 it would fail.

An email to Gov. Steve Sisolak’s office asking whether he would sign or veto the bill should it pass did not garner a response.

Backers say the compact would become a reality if it is adopted by states possessing a combined 270 electoral votes, or a majority of the 538 electoral votes. A similar bill passed in Colorado earlier this year, giving the proposal 181 electoral votes, just 89 votes short of becoming binding.

A similar measure passed the Nevada Assembly in 2009 on a party-line vote but failed to come up for a vote in the state Senate.

The instigation for the current push is the fact that in 2016 Donald Trump won the Electoral College vote by 304 to 227, though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.9 million.

If the National Popular Vote had been in force in 2000 Nevada’s then four electoral votes would have been enough to flip the election to Al Gore, even though George W. Bush won the popular vote in Nevada by 49.5 percent to 46 percent, winning every county except Clark. Bush won the electoral vote 271 to 266, but lost the popular vote by 540,000.

Janine Hansen, state president of the Nevada Families for Freedom, mentioned just such a scenario in testimony opposing AB186.

“There are three dangers I’d like to mention with the National Popular Vote,” Hansen testified. “One is the National Popular Vote will potentially betray the voters of our own state. If our state voted for candidate A and the National Popular Vote winner was candidate B, our votes would be stolen from our desire and given to the National Popular Vote winner, betraying the voters in this state. I think there would be a lot of angry voters if they found out that that’s what happened.”

Hansen also noted there is no national authority for determining the accuracy of the National Popular Vote.

In his testimony, Jim DeGraffenreid, vice chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, pointed out Nevada is currently a battleground state, getting significant attention from national candidates. He said the state’s first-in-the-West caucuses provide opportunities for all Nevadans to participate.

“The Electoral College exists because the Framers of the Constitution believed that each state should matter in selecting the president,” DeGraffenreid testified. “It is designed to protect the smaller states like Nevada. To suggest that a state should disregard its own voters and instead follow the will of voters in some other state is the exact opposite of what the Framers intended.”

He said the bill could make Nevada voters irrelevant.

The Founders created the Electoral College and the U.S. Senate to assure the smaller populated states were not relegated to powerlessness in a one person-one vote system. The states were meant to be sovereign and to hold the powers not specifically delegated to the federal government.

The National Review pointed out in a recent article that using 2016’s turnout stats a candidate could have won 54 percent of the vote in 48 states, losing only California, New York and D.C., but if an opponent won 75 percent of the vote in just those three locales, a 451 to 87 electoral vote landslide would have turned into a popular-vote defeat to 50.7 percent to 49.3 percent — even though the voters in 48 states rejected that candidate.

Should Nevada surrender its presidential votes to California and New York?

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: Just say no to annual legislative sessions

Democrats in Carson City are beating this dead donkey again.

Ten of the 13 state Senate Democrats are pushing for annual legislative sessions instead of sessions every other year. Senate Joint Resolution 5 would amend the state Constitution, which currently calls for 120-calendar-day sessions in odd-numbered years, by establishing 90-legislative-day sessions in odd-numbered years and 60-legislative-day sessions in even numbered years. Similar measures failed in 2013, 2015 and 2017.

The measure would have to pass this session and again in 2021 before going to the voters in 2022. The voters nixed a similar measure in 1970 with 66.2 percent voting against annual sessions.

Currently lawmakers are only paid their $150-a-day salaries for the first 60 days of each session, though they receive per diem expenses for the entire session, which works out to about 96 working days. If SJR5 were to pass, they would receive salaries for 150 days instead of 60 days, essentially a 150 percent pay increase.

A fiscal note prepared by the Legislative Counsel Bureau estimates the change would raise the cost of legislative sessions from the current $20 million every two years to $33.3 million.

“Despite our tradition of biennial sessions it is time for a change. While this tradition made sense during periods when our population was much lower and our finances less complex, it no longer addresses the needs of a rapidly growing state with a multibillion-dollar budget operating in a global market,” state Sen. Joyce Woodhouse of Henderson said during a recent hearing on the resolution. “Our state simply cannot adequately address rapidly changing conditions, a complex budget and policy matters by meeting every other year. In the past 17 years alone, our general revenue fund has more than doubled. At the same time our responsibilities as legislatures have increased significantly.”

Imagine how much the revenue — taken from the pockets of hardworking Nevadans — would have grown if the voters had approved annual sessions half a century ago.

At the hearing state Sen. Heidi Gansert of Reno expressed concerns that annual sessions would make it more difficult for anyone but the well-off to serve. “How do we maintain a citizen Legislature where we have folks who come from all walks of life?” she asked. “This would still be part-time but you would have to take off every year, and so that would be a concern. Who would have employers who would allow them to do that or would this force in some cases only the more affluent to be able to afford to serve?”

Janine Hansen, state president of Nevada Families for Freedom, pointed out that under SJR5 the 60- and 90-legislative-day sessions could last for months if lawmakers meet only a couple of days a week. She pointed out that Utah, with a similar population as Nevada, has its lawmakers meet annually but for only 45 days each year, less than Nevada’s current 120-day sessions.

Hansen suggested the better way to allow lawmakers to handle the work load is to cut the number bills that may be introduced in half.

The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that in the early 1960s only 19 state legislatures met annually, while the rest met biennially. By the mid-1970s, the number of states meeting annually had jumped from 19 to 41. Today only Nevada, Montana, North Dakota and Texas still met biennially. Texas’ population is considerably larger than Nevada’s.

While Nevada does not have full-blown legislative sessions every year it does have standing committees of lawmakers who meet when not in session and are able to make funding and regulatory changes. The governor also has the power to call special legislative sessions, such as the ones called in recent years to dole out billions in tax breaks to electric car makers Telsa and Faraday Future. Just what we need more of, right?

NCLS points out in a list of arguments against annual sessions posted on its website that annual sessions inevitably lead to a spiraling of legislative costs — for the lawmakers as well as the staffers who must be brought together twice as often. Also, biennial sessions allow lawmakers to work with and associate with their constituents. Another argument is that there are enough laws already limiting people’s liberty.

Lawmakers should dump this expensive and counterproductive measure now.

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.

Legislative building in Carson City. (AP pix)

Editorial: Lowering age of compulsory education could be harmful

Nevada lawmakers have for decades been throwing taxpayer money at various feel-good-but-futile programs and schemes in an attempt to drag the state’s public education system up from the lowest rungs.

The latest proposal to surface in the Legislature in Carson City might not be merely futile, but actually harmful.

Democratic North Las Vegas Assemblywoman Olivia Diaz has introduced Assembly Bill 186 that would lower the mandatory school age from 7 to 5 and require schools to create prekindergarten education programs for children as young as 4.

Diaz testified before an Assembly Education Committee hearing this past week, “I think we need to step up our game as a state to make sure there is more access to pre-K programs. Currently, I know my grandbaby is blessed to have two professional, attorney parents to enroll him in a pre-K program as early as 9 months of age, but what happens when you are of a different socio-economic status? What happens when you cannot afford, it’s just not within your means? Do we just look the other way and say, ‘So sad for you. You don’t get this opportunity to start on a level playing field when you enter kindergarten?’ Or do we realize that we have a lot of children … who need a high quality pre-K program? And how do we get that pre-K program to those children in need?”

Diaz said that Nevada is only allocating about $3 million to pre-K programs, while Utah, for example, spends about $9 million.

The fiscal note accompanying AB186 estimates this proposal will cost $352 million in the next biennium and $420 million over the next two years.

The federal Head Start program offering early childhood education has been around since 1965 and costs $8 billion a year, despite the fact a massive federal study found it has had no lasting educational impact.

“In summary, there were initial positive impacts from having access to Head Start, but by the end of 3rd grade there were very few impacts found for either cohort in any of the four domains of cognitive, social-emotional, health and parenting practices. The few impacts that were found did not show a clear pattern of favorable or unfavorable impacts for children,” reported the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation in 2012.

Worse, a study by Stanford and Berkeley universities in 2005 found that early education programs can be harmful. “The biggest eye-opener is that the suppression of social and emotional development, stemming from long hours in preschool, is felt most strongly by children from better-off families,” said UC Berkeley sociologist and co-author Bruce Fuller in a press release.

The study found that the earlier a child enters a preschool center, the slower his or her pace of social development. It also noted that prekindergarten education actually “hinders social development and created poor social behavior, such as bullying and aggression, and a lack of motivation to take part in classroom activities.”

Some things sound like a good idea but don’t turn out to be so.

For example, since 1990 Nevada has spent close to $2.5 billion on class-size reduction in the early grades with nothing to show for it. A 2001 report by the Nevada Legislative Counsel Bureau found that achievement data did not improve and that students in larger classes outperformed those in the smaller classes.

Over the past four decades, according to a Cato Institute analysis, Nevada has increased K-12 public school funding by 80 percent per pupil, adjusted for inflation. During those four decades student test scores have actually fallen slightly.

A number of people testifying against AB186 Wednesday afternoon suggested the state is taking away too many parental rights.

Janine Hansen of Nevada Families for Freedom cited the work of one researcher who looked into 6,000 studies of early childhood eduction and found that starting school later, rather than earlier, led to “the success of children, including in academics, leadership, resisting peer pressure and general success in life. So we believe that the option should be available and that more children could succeed if they were in school later, when their brains are lateralized, when they are developmentally ready.”

Hansen said earlier schooling can be especially a problem for boys who, when forced into school early, can become behavior problems.

“We think parents are the best to educate their children, and they need to be free to make those kinds of decisions,” she said.

We agree. This bill is too expensive, too intrusive and is just as likely to cause more harm than good.

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.

Does pre-K improve education? (AP photo)

 

Bill would start compulsory education at the age of 5

It is one thing to throw other people’s money at a feel-good, but senseless and futile gesture. It is entirely another to spend money on something that may actually do more harm than good.

North Las Vegas Assemblywoman Olivia Diaz has introduced a bill that would lower the mandatory school age from 7 to 5 and require schools to create prekindergarten education programs for children as young as 4. It is Assembly Bill 186. The fiscal note says this will cost $352 million in the next biennium and $420 million over the next two years.

Diaz claims this will benefit children.

But the federal Head Start program has been around since 1965 and costs $8 billion a year and continues, despite the fact a massive federal study found it has no lasting educational impact.

“In summary, there were initial positive impacts from having access to Head Start, but by the end of 3rd grade there were very few impacts found for either cohort in any of the four domains of cognitive, social-emotional, health and parenting practices. The few impacts that were found did not show a clear pattern of favorable or unfavorable impacts for children,” reported the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation in 2012.

Worse, a study by Stanford and Berkeley universities in 2005 found that early education programs can be harmful. “The biggest eye-opener is that the suppression of social and emotional development, stemming from long hours in preschool, is felt most strongly by children from better-off families,” said UC Berkeley sociologist and co-author Bruce Fuller in a press release.

The study found that the earlier a child enters a preschool center, the slower his or her pace of social development. It also noted that prekindergarten education actually “hinders social development and created poor social behavior, such as bullying and aggression, and a lack of motivation to take part in classroom activities.”

Some things look like a good idea but don’t turn out to be so.

We may also recall that the Nevada since 1990 has spent close to $2.5 billion on class-size reduction in the early grades with nothing to show for it. A 2001 report by the Nevada Legislative Counsel Bureau found that achievement data did not produce results. Students in larger classes outperformed those in the smaller classes.

Over the past four decades, according to a Cato Institute analysis, Nevada has increased K-12 public school funding by 80 percent per pupil, adjusted for inflation. During those four decades student test scores have actually fallen slightly.

A number of people testifying against AB186 Wednesday afternoon suggested the state is taking away too many parental rights.

 

 

 

What, oh what, to call politicians who flip-flop on an issue in a single day?

I can’t decide if they are dithering dolts or vacillating varlets or wavering wastrels.

Eight Republicans this week voted against amending a Senate bill to allow concealed carry permittees to carry their concealed weapons on college campuses, but seven of them later joined as sponsors of a new bill (Assembly Bill 487) that would accomplish the same thing, according to the Las Vegas newspaper account today. The Assembly vote against the amendment was 24-18.

Can’t tell whether they grew new spines or were kicked in the butt. The paper lists the seven changelings as Assembly members James Oscarson, Jim Wheeler, Melissa Woodbury, Derek Armstrong, Chris Edwards, Stephen Silberkraus and Lynn Stewart. Majority Leader Paul Anderson, who also voted against amending the Senate bill, is not listed as a sponsor.

On Friday conservative activist Chuck Muth sent an email missive listing the eight Republicans who voted against the “campus carry” amendment along with their phone numbers. He called them shameful and quoted another conservative activist, Tony Warren, as saying, “Remember these names. They are not worthy to serve as our representatives. Damn them to HELL.”

Muth included this detail of the events:

Our good friend Janine Hansen at Nevada Families reported on another aspect of this shameful display of betrayal and cowardice yesterday.

Assembly Speaker-of-the-Weak John Hambrick called for a voice vote on the SB175/AB148 hybrid gun bill.  He ruled from the chair that the vote was too close to call and ordered a “division of the house.”

A division of the house simply means everyone who supports the bill stands up and the total is counted, and then everyone who opposes the bill stands up to be counted.

The problem with that is that each individual legislator is allowed to escape casting a RECORDED vote in the official record.

So conservative Assemblywoman Michele Fiore – God bless her – stood up and asked for a roll-call vote.

Hambrick ruled her out of order and rejected the request.

Fiore than asked for a one-minute recess – a request that rarely, if ever, is denied.

Hambrick rejected her request.

(“So he (Hambrick) was in league with the anti-gun rights Republicans,” ((Janine)) Hansen wrote. “This is a disgrace!!! Why elect Republicans when they betray us on the most basic liberty issues like self defense?”)

Darned good question.  But back to Fiore…

After being shot down by Hambrick, the Las Vegas Republican immediately left the Assembly chamber and headed to her office where she called the lead lawyer at the Legislative Counsel Bureau (LCB), Brenda Erdoes, to ask if Hambrick really had the power to deny a request for a roll-call vote and/or one-minute recess.

But to give you an idea of just how paranoid and unhinged some folks are in Carson City about Fiore, apparently somebody thought she might have left the chamber to go get her gun and was afraid she’d come back and shoot the place up.

So, I’m told, legislative police were called to the first floor to secure the Assembly chamber and block Fiore from returning to her seat!

Un-freaking-believable.

Eventually, Fiore was allowed back on the floor and later in the day rose and issued a statement, FOR THE RECORD, identifying by name the eight Republicans who turned tail and ran when the heat got too hot in the kitchen and sold out campus carry supporters.

The Review-Journal reported that Republican Assembly Judiciary Chairman Ira Hansen criticized the creation of the new bill as an effort to gain “political cover.”

“And that is a huge mistake politically, and it was the wrong thing to do, and they abandoned their own party’s base,” he is quoted as saying of the votes against the campus carry amendment. “And now what they want to do, is come back when it is not going to make any difference and they know it, and have me go through the whole hearing process again as we already did on (AB)148, to give them political cover.

“And I think it stinks, and I think we had a shot if they would have stuck to their guns. …

“So they chickened out, they caved in on the whole issue and now they want to come back and pretend like they are going to be the heroes and resurrect the bill.”

Michele Fiore speaks on the Assembly floor Friday. (R-J photo)

The Reno newspaper account simply said:

Fiore stormed out of the chamber after that vote was taken when Speaker John Hambrick, R-Las Vegas, refused to call for a roll call vote on the issue or stop the floor session for a brief time out.

She later returned and apologized.

Muth just posted a follow-up this morning under the headline: “Who Shot Campus Carry? A Muth’s Truths Investigation – Part I.”

In this posting Muth notes that Gov. Brian Sandoval does not want a campus carry bill to make it to his desk and force him to veto it and suggests certain Republicans are trying to protect him.