“Tuesday we told you about several areas around the planet experiencing record cold and snowpack — in the face of all the predictions of global warming.

Now there is word that all four major global temperature tracking outlets have released data showing that temperatures have dropped significantly over the last year. California meteorologist Anthony Watts says the amount of cooling ranges from 65-hundredths of a degree Centigrade to 75-hundreds of a degree.

That is said to be a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. It is reportedly the single fastest temperature change ever recorded — up or down.

Some scientists contend the cooling is the result of reduced solar activity — which they say is a larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases.” Al Gore has no comment.

Noah Wyle has been appearing in a series of commercials about the fable of Global Warming. He contends that if we do nothing about this looming disaster the polar bear will fall into extinction. Noah, wonderful actor that he is, knows nothing or has done no research on the aforementioned bear. There are more polar bear now than there were during the time of Napoleon, which was at the end of the little ice age. Al Gore has nothing to say about that.

During 2008 several accredited climate researchers began publishing nonpolitically correct studies on climate change. In these studies they found that “greenhouse gases” had little overall effect on global climate. Man’s contribution was negligible at best. The largest contributor of so-called greenhouse gasses was and is the active volcano and man has yet to find h a way to deal with those. Al Gore remains silent on this point.

Some less than credible scientists have posited that the general lowering of temperatures are in fact an indication of global warming. That is like saying that the current credit crisis is in fact a sign of global prosperity. It is doublespeak. All it proves is that they too read George Orwell. Humanity has the ability to destroy its immediate environment. That has been proven time and time again. Humanity’s ability to destroy the earth is suspect and frankly best left for science fiction. The earth has recovered from celestial impacts that rivaled the sum total of every nuclear device every made...and it is still here. Not sure what Al Gore has to say about that.

Think back during the last couple months of the 2008 presidential campaign. Obama stated that he felt that “marriage should be between a man and a woman.” The record is very clear on this, he did say exactly that. Does anyone remember even a whisper of controversy from the media or even one homosexual rights group? No, of course not. Obama can say anything whether it be pure or profane and his supporters will swallow it as if it came from on high. But let a woman who seems to be a Christian say such a thing and she is spewing hatred from the very depths of hell.

Sarah Palin has to be conflicted right now. Carrie Prejean, Miss California 2009 has become the new ground central for every last drop of far left hate speech, and do not mistake it, what is being said qualifies as hate speech. If the same were being said about Rosie O’Donnell or even Ellen DeGeneres, calls would be issued for an in-depth investigation at the Congressional level. I doubt even the most strident opponent of Prejean can dispute this...honestly. They will dispute it, but a close examination of all their arguments will reveal the lie behind the words.

Both of these women have committed a gross sin in the eyes of the press, they spoke their minds without asking whether or not what they were about to say was politically acceptable to the media at large. The press lives each day sheltered behind the first amendment. I doubt many are capable of even quoting that passage accurately much less describing the conditions under which it was written. According to those who are currently heading our political system, Carrie Prejean and Sarah Palin do not have the same rights as an O’Donnell or a DeGeneres because they choose to live outside of what has become the mainstream. They choose to honor their spouses and choose to bring their children up to respect virtues such as personal responsibility...and that flies in the face of what is acceptable, and is the lifestyle lived by most who deliver our news today.

Many questions have been asked why our government seems so inadequate in solving our ongoing problems. The simple answer is that the parties are too busy fighting each other to actually accomplish anything. Compounding that is the fact that they also don’t want to upset any of the big money people who typically donate to their campaigns, even if it is the right thing to do.

I have always believed that if an elected official becomes aware of a wrong being perpetrated, that official should take steps to stop it. I did so when I was approached by a group of casino employees upset over their tips being stolen from them by the casino owner. In researching this I found a state law that forbids the taking of tips. My own party attacked me over this, claiming I was violating the “free market”. The fact that a law was being broken was beside the point. In reality, the party in Nevada is owned by the gaming industry and they were told to remove an irritant.

Anyone who has ever watched the TV series The West Wing is familiar with the character Wesley. That character, throughout the series, consistently argues against allowing the Republicans to win anything, even if that win benefits the country. The unfortunate truth is that that attitude prevails in American politics. Elected officials are Democrats, not Americans; Republicans, not Americans; and it doesn’t end there.

Ever hear of Affirmative Action? It is a nasty piece of legislation that legitimizes discrimination because someone’s ancestor may have been discriminated against by someone in the past. In essence it is Washington saying that in this case, two wrongs do make a right. What it has actually done is keep the division going. In the US we do not have Americans in a variety of colors, we have African Americans, Mexican Americans, and so on…We are so busy creating and maintaining socio-political walls to divide our populace that we have become antagonistic toward those who try to scale the wall.

Like our government, our education system is in rapid decline not simply because we refuse to pay for the tools to do the job properly, but because we have surrendered to the politically correct forces who insist on maintaining the walls. The school board in my area has members who actively fight against those methods proven to work in the classroom because those methods are not politically popular with their party leadership.

The Democrat Party will not support anything that upsets the fanatic left. As a result, the party of John F. Kennedy seems to support international terrorism, the killing of healthy, living babies via partial birth abortion, the granting of amnesty to the vilest of serial killers, the removal of personal responsibility, the removal of any right that promotes self-reliance, the destruction of heterosexual marriage and the core family unit, the elimination of Israel as a state, and the dissolution of America as a sovereign nation.

The Republican Party, the party of Lincoln and Reagan has metastasized into a party that openly supports massive corporate theft, human trafficking, the resurgence of plantation style slavery, the elimination of small business and the destruction of public education.

Either way we lose, simply because the American voter no longer cares about who runs their party.

“All public school teachers are commie-leftists!”

This is the typical rejoinder from conservative talk hosts when pushed into a corner where anything other than private or home-school education is concerned. The problem with this is most of them have never been in a classroom since they left high school. Information about public school comes to them from what they read in Talkers Magazine and from what they hear on other likeminded shows. This is not what would be considered an in-depth investigation of the problem.

As a member of Nevada’s State Government I sat on the committee on education. After the session I acquired a teaching license and entered the classroom as a substitute teacher. A substitute is able to sample a variety of classrooms and schools. In this way I learned first hand what actually went on in the schools, what the teaching staff did and felt about a variety of issues and how the students did and didn’t learn. The reality within this country’s schools is so far removed from what talk radio dispenses that the word “fiction” is beyond inadequate as a description. In all honesty, I cannot use the word “lie” because hosts like Alan Stock, Rush Limbaugh, Hannity and others really believe the tripe they are dishing out.

The truth is that most public school teachers, kindergarten is the exception, are not left leaning in their politics at all. Many of the teachers I spoke to were somewhat more conservative than I, and I received the highest rating on the conservative voting scale in the last legislative session. I was 12 points more conservative than Mr. Stock’s favorite State Senator. The teachers told me that they were, for the most part, disgusted with the decisions of both the union and the school board and they could not understand the hatred that people like Alan continuously expressed toward their chosen profession. Frankly, neither can I.

“Teachers are paid too much already! And their benefits make up for it anyway!”

Yes, I suppose earning less than $35,000 a year while working an average 60 hour week attempting to inject some relevant knowledge into the minds of spoiled brats with no hope of any acknowledgement from the system for your accomplishment is reward enough. Talk show host continuously bleat out the lie that teachers only work a 6 hour day and get 3 months off every year with pay. Why, teaching is really a part-time job, why should we pay them any more?

I would expect such statements from someone who never paid a moment’s attention in school. But these people claim to have graduated from college. Of course, we are discussing talk show hosts here. In essence, they are the mirror image of micro minds like Michael Moore and Al Franken. The typical teacher begins their day waking up before 5am in order to get to school in time to prepare the classroom and that day’s lessons. They stay at least 2 hours past the time the students leave, so there is an 8 hour day, but it isn’t over yet. Once at home they have grading and more lesson-planning to do, in addition to any other paperwork the administration has palmed off onto their already overloaded shoulders. Merit is not considered here because of the seniority-based union leadership, and woe betide any upstart who tries to be innovative ahead of their time. And the talk show hosts wonder why so many teachers are retiring early.

“Why don’t they teach what is relevant any more? Kids are graduating and they can’t even balance a checkbook!”

You try to deal with a class that has 15 more students in it than you have chairs. It is amazing that some teachers can even get a partial lesson through to some of their students. One of the major problems with this scene is that talk radio has not moved with the times. To them, the classroom is still what they experienced. They have no realization what 15 to 30 years of union and school bard meddling has done to the teaching profession. A teacher cannot discipline properly because the parents might sue the school. The students have little or no respect for their parents; much less the teacher because they have no fear of any consequence for acting badly, and most administrations will not back up the teacher who attempts to keep a proper decorum in the classroom. There are a couple schools in my area where the administration does this and they have been targeted for budget cuts by the district.

Right now, in my state, much needed funds are being redirected from education to autism programs. In the legislature’s vast wisdom it is far more important to treat autism than to teach little Johnny and Janie to read. In the last legislative session we tried to get additional funding into Vocational Education, but where did the school superintendents want to put the money? All Day Kindergarten. Daycare for yuppies was more important.

“Private school and home schooling is far better than public school!”

No, they are not. The class sizes make the difference. In many ways the curriculum may be far worse than that of a public school. The variable is who is doing the teaching. The parent or private teacher may be good or not. It is completely possible that that teacher may be turning out the Ronald Reagan, or the next Adolph Hitler. It’s a crap shoot, not a sure thing.

It is not the teachers’ fault that America’s literacy rate is falling faster than the value of the dollar. The fault lies squarely on the shoulders of those who continuously badmouth teaching without doing a blessed thing to help the situation. In a city of over two million, it is going to take a busload of money to teach the hundreds of thousands of children who desperately need to know how to read, write, and balance a checkbook. The job cannot be done in your kitchen and it cannot be done part time and it is going to take everyone chipping in some of their money to pay for it. If we put forth the effort we could have the best educated populace the world has ever seen. The problem is, we would have to stop being narrow-minded to do so. In some cases that would mean developing a mind.

The recent news of the Obama Administration actually telling a private business who they can have as a boss is an example of just how far to the left this country has swerved. If this had happened during the fifties, an impeachment trial would now be an ongoing event. What is the most dismaying part of this drama is the sanguine attitude of the GOP regarding the President’s illegal action. Perhaps none of them have read the constitution lately.

That brings me to my core point. Would you be shocked to find that many who call themselves conservative are actually more liberal than most Democrats? No, I am not writing hyperbole to prove a point. Sadly, I am writing actual fact.

The country of Columbia was at one time the murder capital of the world. A few years ago they elected a non-politician/non-soldier to be their president. This new leader came from an education background and immediately moved to change the way things were done in his country. Educational spending went from a tiny percentage of the gross to 40%. The few elite private schools now had real competition and that competition had all the tools the private schools used to consider theirs alone. Columbia went from murder capital to one of the safest countries per capita in the world. What about the social services, the military? They found that an educated populace becomes more self-reliant and more willing to be a part of the country’s production rather than a drain. What a concept!

Here in the U.S., we spend about 1% of that 40%…and we complain about doing that. Many in the GOP consider the teaching profession an enemy, placing them ahead of Islamic Terrorism in the list. Some have even gone so far as to try to logically prove the necessity of a dependant class as an important portion of America’s labor force. In that, they are marching lock step with the extreme left in this country. They want, in essence, to have their cake and eat it too. When I was in State Government, I had a fellow Assemblyman tell me that my bill to curtail illegal immigration would bankrupt the state. This same Assemblyman had, a few days before, lauded Oklahoma and Arizona for passing similar legislation.

The hypocrisy taps are running wide open. George Bush trumpeted his “doing the jobs American’s won’t do” tripe. Newspaper publishers in my state, on one hand, decry the cost of illegals, while using them in their own printing facilities as a cost-saver. Our black messiah, Barrack Obama, chides the same industry he forced, as a member of ACORN, to issue unsafe loans, for issuing those loans. Here in Nevada we have a governor who called for more emphasis on vocational education, and then tries to cut the education budget in his state, in some cases by nearly 50%.

Can America afford to do what Columbia did? Of course we can. Will we? Not with our current leaders. We don’t have a single political leader with even a microbial amount of courage. We do have some politicians with courage to spare, but in Washington, they are the ones issued the basement offices.

Have you ever wondered why Barrack Obama never brings up Martin Luthor King's speech where Doctor King speaks of racial equality? The reason is that that speech calls for all races to treat each other with respect. Doctor King would have refused to pass any program such as Affirmative Action because he would have considered that program racist based on its discrimination for skin color.

Rush Limbaugh's sin is his admission that he wants to see Obama fail. Apparently all those Democrats and reporters who expressed the same desire in relation to George Bush had a get out of jail free card. It is ever that way with the left and their sycophantic media supporters; free speech isn’t quite as free as politically correct speech. Who cares about that inconvenient First Amendment? Besides, how dare he insult America’s Black Messiah?

Try as I may, I cannot find any hint of deity in Mr. Obama. As far as I can see he is, frankly, more fallible than most humans. He just has a more prominent job. It doesn’t place him on any higher of a plain than the rest of homo sapiens. He has none of the traits one would expect of a messiah. He hasn’t healed a single disease or injury. He hasn’t fed a multitude with a few loaves and fishes. He certainly has not walked on water or even turned water into wine. What about parting the Red Sea? Well, he is drowning us in a sea of red ink. Does that count?

The test begins with the filling out of several forms detailing the assorted dangers of radioactivity. This is because prior to laying down in the scanner, the nurse will approach you with a needle the size of a Desert Eagle handgun. The vial holds, I'm not kidding, a glowing green fluid that belongs on the set of The Incredible Hulk. You see this green fluid through a small window in the vial. The rest of the structure is a lead container nearly identical to a radioactive waste container.

The stuff they inject is radioactive enough that you become the power that runs the scanner. Anything suspicious will show up as a dark spot in the printed scan. Precautions after the test include sitting down when you wee and avoiding standing near children and pregnant women.

The small spot in my lower right lung barely lit up. The area in my cervical spinal cord did not show any activity at all, so whatever is going on there, it isn't cancer. What lit up a lot was the collection of lymph nodes near my bronchial tubes. So, yesterday they went in and took out a few. The surgeon immediately pronounced them to be granulomas. A granulnoma is one of a number of forms of localized nodular inflammation found in tissues. The fact that a granuloma is localized is important. So is its nodularity. Granulomas have a typical pattern when examined under a microscope. The really important bit is that they are not cancer.

On another front, it appears that socialism has metastasized in Washington D.C..

The US House and Senate are about to vote on bill that will outlaw organic farming(bill HR 875).

The main backer and lobbyist is Monsanto. Monsanto makes chemical fertilizers, go figure. The husband of the Congresswoman who dropped the bill just happens to be a Monsanto official. Hmmm.

This bill will require organic farms to use specific fertilizers and insecticides dictated by the newly formed agency to "make sure there is no danger to the public food supply". This will include backyard gardens that grow food only for a family and not for sales. Can anyone remember the text of George Orwell's 1984?

Henry Kissinger put it this way: "Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control people." The Obama Administration is an amalgamation of the Clinton Administration and all the assorted far left radicals that made the 60's and 70's worth forgetting. Obama has never rejected his Weatherman connections nor those who called for the execution of millions of US citizens when they achieved power. He is systematically dismantling our economic system, and it appears that the big news networks are going right along with his plan.

In September, I began experiencing a creeping numbness, beginning with my feet and eventually encompassing both legs and hips. As I type this I feel some of it in my right hand. The MRIs show a mass in the spinal cord in my neck that may or may not be malignant. There is every possibility that in order to continue living, I will have to have micro surgery. Unfortunately, my insurance may not allow me to go to the one clinic that knows how to perform the operation, the Mayo Clinic in Arizona.

Good doctors are leaving Nevada en mass. The primary reason is that the legal community, along with gleeful help from the insurance industry, is driving them away. The only growth industry in Nevada right now is that of the ambulance chaser attorney. Because of that, and a tendency of the courts to not want to hold anyone personally responsible for their own idiotic actions, liability coverage for doctors has skyrocketed in Nevada.

One of the first effects of the doctor exodus is a lessening of options for patients seeking medical help. When you are the only provider, customer service isn't a priority.

Health Insurance is another problem. Most coverage offered in Nevada isn't worth the time it takes to fill out the forms. HPN is the largest provider and the worst in providing coverage. The problem is that those running the company see the premiums their policyholders as a path to personal wealth rather than payment for services rendered. Unfortunately, most insurance companies have this attitude. The loser is us.

In my quest for a medical solution to my problem, I have run into incompetence, corruption, self-serving rapaciousness and laziness that, in any truly civilized society, should lead to jail time for the offenders. In this state there will be no movement from those empowered to protect the populace because they are owned by those reaping the financial rewards of corruption. Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie is chairwoman of the Health and Human Services Committee. During the last legislative session she prevented a bill that would have stopped hospitals from charging a patient for non-delivered products and services. Guess who donates large amounts to Assemblywoman Leslie’s campaign.

Sheila Leslie is only one example. As a Nevada State Assemblyman, I saw literally dozens. Hers is actually less hypocritical than most.

Here is a question for you. Why is it that nearly every power that be in Nevada goes out of state for medical care?

The way out of this mess is so simple and straight forward that it is not at all surprising every single political leader missed it. One good reason is that part of the recipe demands a lessening of the greed factor. Right there we have ruled out a significant portion of corporate and political America, but, believe me, it is necessary.

In order to get through this we have to hit the problem from both ends, both in the reduction of costs and in revenue growth. A huge factor is the cost of fuel, which is directly related to infrastructure. If we spent the time to put in place the infrastructure to handle and distribute alternative fuels, gas prices would plummet. Nothing balances a market like competition, and building that infrastructure would add thousands of high quality jobs. The greed factor could be handled by adding in real oversight that included stiff fines and even jail time for corruption, including that of politicians. If such oversight upsets some of the powerful and prevents certain multinational corporations from participating, so much the better, who needs ‘em? This country has plenty of smaller and smarter firms willing to step in and grow. This could be a chance for Obama to put his pen where his mouth is and prove he actually is for the little guy.

Another area is education. Our elected leaders claim they are for excellence in education, but they just don’t want to pay for it. If we diverted one tenth of the money we send overseas and put it into education, not administration, we would have enough to pay teachers what they are really worth, build schools large enough to accommodate all of the students and put every text book and tool they need into their hands. Imagine what we could do if we raised that amount to 20%. It’s high time the rest of the UN paid its portion of the freight any way.

Have you ever heard of the Toyota Volta? It is an electric car that looks good and can travel upwards of 250 miles on a single charge from a standard household outlet. Ever wonder why it isn’t offered for sale? How about the Mini Cooper Hybrid that gets 85 miles to the gallon with no loss of acceleration? It isn’t allowed to be sold in the US. Ever wonder why? The answers to these questions can be had in Washington, if you can get them to talk.

Just north of Las Vegas, up I15 before you get to the town of Mesquite, there is a long stretch of BLM land that would be ideal for an industrial development. Imagine putting in plants to build cars like the Cooper Hybrid and the Volta. Do you think the companies would have problems selling them? Absolutely not. Of course, we would have to deal with the greed factor again. This means that executives would have to trim their wages back far enough so that factory workers could be paid a real living wage without the crippling financial effect the unions had on Detroit. It can be done if all sides can actually work together.

In the Armagosa Valley there is a dairy. Because of milk price controls (the price is kept high, not low), the dairy is not allowed to sell all of its production. A deal was worked out so a gourmet ice cream company could build a plant across the street from the dairy to turn the overproduction into ice cream. Nevada and California sued to prevent the plant from being built because of “environmental concerns”. Now Utah has yet another prospering concern adding to its fortunes.

Ever since gambling was legalized in Nevada, tourists have been crowding I15 as the flow in from California. Train tracks run along that route for most of the way. A commuter train has been discussed without resolution for about as long. The problem is that no one can decide who pays what. This is where the heavy hand of Washington is needed. The same way the legislature is being forced to fund education if they want to get federal dollars, the same can be used to bring commuter travel into this century. Force a joint state public private partnership. Do not allow corruption of favoritism to enter in by jailing anyone, regardless of who they are, and that includes mayors and governors if they break the law, and begin building. The cost can be paid by the use of tickets and tools. Commuter choice can be enhanced by also maintaining a free travel highway for those who don’t mind traveling at a slower pace.

Home ownership is one of the big ones right now. With so many banks crumbling because they allowed themselves to be sucked into the ACORN ponzi scheme, a radical restructuring needs to be done. Even if a mortgage holder is upside down, there was a point where they were able to pay the monthly freight on the mortgage. A great number of the failures, excluding those idiots who purchased multiple homes hoping for a quick flip, were brought on because the bank raised the interest rates and refused to back down on that rate even when it became apparent they would have to eat the loan. All they have to do is reduce that rate down to a level where the original mortgagee can again make a payment, even if that level is below prime. A little profit is better than a loss. This is again where greed has to take a back seat. There is nothing wrong in flying coach instead of buying an over-priced private jet.

The recipe is, education, enforced corporate and governmental honesty, public-private partnerships, the ignoring of bothersome environmental suits only intended to prevent growth, and common sense. That last component is the rarest of all.

Take the current financial crisis we are going through. A few weeks ago, several hundred teachers in the Nevada School System were given their walking papers. As contracted employees they will finish out the year, but then they will have to find new jobs. Have any of those firing these teachers taken cuts in salary to save a job or two? The cynical answer is the right one. To compound the insult, a few days ago these teachers had to attend a mandatory meeting with a United Way representative asking for handouts.

Whoever planned this had to have been at such a rarified level of administration that their brain has atrophied from lack of oxygen. You do not tell employees you have just fired that they now have to donate a portion of the penny-ante salary you pay them. The United Way tells every one that every cent of their donation goes to charity, that none of it goes toward administrative costs. The one telling this manages to say this with a straight face while wearing a very expensive suit and showing a Hollywood quality video. Yes, and politicians always tell the truth.

The Nevada Legislature is now in session. At the top of the discussion is what to do about the mandate attached to Obama’s stimulus package. In order to qualify, Nevada has to replace nearly 300 million of the dollars it just took away from education. To hear some of the GOP leaders like Bill Raggio, you would think Washington was asking them to give up drinking.

I told these leaders how to solve their budget problem. I told them over two years ago. They didn’t listen and I doubt they understand how to solve it now. The problem lies in an inability to think pragmatically. To them, the public consists of a flock of sheep. Their constituencies are the campaign donors and the businesses paying for all the little perks that make political office so attractive. The flock gets sheared and the donors and politicians reap the rewards. This is the way it has always been…until now. The public has begun to hold back their dollars and the legislature is running scared. Their greatest fear is that they might actually have to do their job and do it honestly. Obama’s mandate was a superb piece of manuvering.

If you go to Wikipedia and search for states with lotteries you will see a concise list and the style of lottery game they play. There is also a site maintained by the American Gaming Association that displays a list of U.S. States participating in Commercial Casinos, Indian Casinos, Lotteries, Pari-mutuel Wagering, Racetrack Casinos, and Charitable Gaming.

All of these lists are easily cross-checked. A search for Nevada will show that outside of commercial casinos, the state has almost no presence in any other style of gaming. A search of states with lotteries will show quite the opposite. States with lotteries also share the wealth with Indian Casinos, Pari-Mutual, Racetracks and Charitable Gaming. It takes a bit of digging, but the diligent searcher will discover that those states with Indian Casinos, Commercial Casinos and lotteries are also states where the companies behind commercial gaming in Nevada have a strong presence. You will also find that those states charge far higher gaming tax rates than Nevada. This begs the question, why, if those companies can easily afford to maintain casinos in a state with both higher taxes and a lottery, does gaming in Nevada claim that Nevada cannot afford a lottery, much less a raise in the gaming tax?

Besides having a run in the Nevada Legislature, I worked for nearly 20 years in gaming design as a graphic artist. I learned from the inside just how much intensity goes into gaining a gaming license in states outside of Nevada. Many of the major players on the Las Vegas strip have effectively gotten down onto their knees and begged to be allowed to build a property in places like Gulfport, knowing full well that they would pay a tax upwards of fives times higher than that in Nevada. When Governor Jim Gibbons suggested taking a half-cent from the room tax given to the resort association’s tourism board and using it to pay for road repair, the association nearly had a stroke.

The careful reader will notice a distinct disparity here. Gaming has run Nevada for so long that it cannot conceive of any other situation. If this state’s economy is to ever recover, it has to rely on other sources of income, but it also has to use pragmatism rather than favoritism in its tax policy. If a company can prosper in a state with a lottery while paying a higher tax rate, than it can certainly do so in Nevada. A rough run of the numbers shows that Nevada could increase its tax income by a half billion dollars simply by allowing a state lottery. Approximately half that amount goes to neighboring California and Arizona each year because they have lotteries and Nevada does not. The reason Nevada’s Legislature has not voted to allow a lottery? Key leaders in the State Senate and Assembly have been told by gaming that their campaigns would suffer if they allowed that to happen.

Right now Nevada’s Governor is suggesting that the state has to slash the education budget by nearly 50% in order to balance the budget. He has suggested this without even once looking at the end result of such an action. He has also refused to consider any common sense solutions that consider the raising of revenue. Allowing a future generation to suffer in order to save the present generation a few pennies is not being conservative, it is being foolish. Allowing the tax payer to choose whether or not to pay a tax is common sense and fits right in with the thinking of the founding fathers. Allowing Nevada to have a lottery is a good first step.

The Henderson Chamber of Commerce refused to support my reelection because I stood up to a corrupt casino owner. Terry Graves, on of the officers and a chief lobbyist for the chamber was particularly upset about that perceived betrayal of Republican values. To today’s GOP, there is little difference between Republican and Democrat. They both value campaign dollars above human life. As the Assembly Speaker, Mr. Perkins cost Henderson Businesses millions more by raising taxes that what I would have by forcing some honesty into the system. Perkins is the one they hired at a retainer of $10,000 a month.

Politics has developed an ingrained system of corrupt behavior and corrupt deals. All of these dealings and doings violate the law, and in some cases the ones doing the violation wrote the laws they break. If that sounds monumentally cynical, it is. It reminds me of a story of two politicians arguing. In the middle of the argument, one stands and shouts at the other, “You’re a liar!” The one accused nods and replies, “Of course I am, but hear me out!”

In the Nevada Revised Statutes there is a provision that forbids a public servant from acting as a lobbyist before a certain period of time has elapsed. This is a sort of “cooling off” period. During his time as Assembly Speaker, Mr. Perkins expressed concern over those who violated that rule. Apparently the rules do not apply where he is concerned. We have yet another case of a politician following the “do as I say, not as I do” doctrine.

As reported, Richard Perkins left the Henderson Police Force with a lifetime pension of $99,400 a year. The City of Henderson, paying that pension, seems to have money to burn because they granted their ex-police chief a one time separation payment of $242,132 and will be paying him $120,000 per year to lobby the legislature. The legislature only meets every other year, and only for 16 weeks, but Perkins will receive his salary every year. Not bad for part time work.

What is remarkable is that according to Nevada law, it is illegal part time work. Remember, according to the law, public servants cannot be hired as lobbyists right out of retirement. The City of Henderson and Mr. Perkins claim to have gotten around the law by hiring a corporation, not a person. The corporation? Richard Perkins, Inc.

      1.  No cause of action may be brought or maintained against an insurer or a third-party administrator who violates any provision of this chapter or chapter 616A, 616B, 616C or 617 of NRS.

      2.  The administrative fines provided for in NRS 616B.318 and 616D.120 are the exclusive remedies for any violation of this chapter or chapter 616A, 616B, 616C or 617 of NRS committed by an insurer or a third-party administrator.

The above provision in the Nevada Revised Statutes is a nasty bit of legislation designed to allow an insurance carrier to lie, cheat, steal, and even commit third-party murder and get away with it. Section 1 says that the policy holder cannot sue the insurance company or any of its agents even if they act in bad faith. Section 2 says that the fines the administration, read insurance commissioner, a politician reliant on the industry for his office, is all that can be done.

So, if a health insurance company or a workers compensation carrier decides that cheating a policyholder is more profitable than paying for desperately needed care, there is nothing the injured party can do. The Nevada Legislature, slave to dishonest business interests, said so.

As a Nevada Assemblyman, I was given a tour of the executive offices of Health Plan of Nevada, the state’s largest HMO. The office of HPN’s CEO was a single room larger than my house and outfitted in a splendor that would have embarrassed royalty. That is where the majority of your insurance premiums go. Why do you think the legal profession has made itself rich by building a business squeezing out a slightly larger award than what the insurance company wants to hand out?

An insurance policy is a contract and in any other circumstance a contract binds both parties equally. Somehow, in this case, the odds have shifted over toward one side. Now insurance is not a promise of coverage but more of a ponzi scheme. The policy holder saves a tiny percentage over what they may have paid for their loss while the CEO of the company issuing that coverage buys a new corporate jet.

One of the most prestigious hospitals in the world is the Mayo Clinic. That clinic is non-profit because those who started it felt that it would be immoral to profit off of peoples’ suffering. I tend to agree. In fact, the medical profession should no more be a path to wealth than being a pastor in a church. Health Insurance and Workers Compensation Insurance should also be non-profit industries. I ran a quick check of the numbers. If health insurance and hospitalization went non-profit and its staff was paid a decent wage, the cost of healthcare would drop by over 50%.

Some claim that if such a program were implemented, we would descend into the same morass that Canada’s socialized system endures. Not true, people would still have to pay, but they would be paying less for more. Not more for less, which is what we have now. All we would be doing is removing the sharks from the pool, and that is not a bad thing.

Most of the money would come through the government's two largest grant programs, Title I (for educating low-income children) and IDEA (aid for the learning disabled). The 2009 allocation also contains a large dose of money for building schools and fixing old ones. What the bill does not contain is any money for teachers, and there is a nasty little loophole that allows Washington to withhold the funds at a whim.

That loophole is a matching funds provision. States, such as Nevada, that are trying to solve their budget problems without real reform will be forced to come up with funding that matches what Washington is preparing to give. If they don’t, those monies are withheld. Governor Jim Gibbons’ budget, one that he put together without consulting a single affected entity, bases the majority of its core budget solution on reducing the state’s obligation to education by over 50%. This move is typical of the personalities that have taken over the power structure within the Republican Party. Ronald Reagan would never have condoned such a “solution”.

Today’s Republican Party, at least in my state of Nevada, has allowed itself to be co-opted by radical elements that claim to speak for all conservatives but don’t even belong to the party and by office holders who have gladly sold their ethics and honor for the promise of campaign funds. What is the saddest point of all is that the voters don’t seem to care about this. They consistently vote for whoever sends out the largest volume of ad material; especially if those ads promise the voter something for nothing. In the end all they get for that vote is nothing.

Where education is concerned, Nevada’s conservative pundits seem to have a huge blind spot. They write on a regular basis about failing to learn the lessons of history where tax policy is concerned, but at the same time they fail to see what we have done to our schools.

Few people remember now, but there was a time when the American Education System was the envy of the world. Back then teachers were allowed to teach without also having to be a secretary for the administration. They were allowed to exact real discipline without the threat of a lawsuit being held over their heads. Textbooks were thick and held real knowledge, undiluted by politically correct censorship.

Teachers’ wages were low, but so were the administrations’, so they all shared the same boat and they worked together to put out the best product they could, a student prepared to enter the working world.

Those who attack our public schools in the media offer little in the way of solutions, but this is typical of the type. For them, reaction is all they have, but like Governor Gibbons, they refuse to even discuss the issue with those they perceive as the enemy. So what do we do?

Private schools and vouchers are no solution. All those do is exempt the pundits and their supporters from the same burden of citizenship everyone else shares in. If we are to keep our country sovereign, we have to have a citizenry capable of meeting the challenges of this world head on, and they cannot do that if they cannot read, write, or think. In order to succeed in this work we will have to upset and offend a significant portion of our population.

Groups that focus on a narrow band of human sexuality, either to the right of the left, will have to be told that their opinion does not matter where education is concerned. Groups who feel that the US Government is fascist or worse will have to be told much the same. Groups who feel that the color of a persons’ skin is paramount will have to be removed from the discussion. Most especially we will have to prevent the legal community from having anything to do with education. The only part any group should have in education is what they have left for the historical record. Policy, procedure and regulation that deal with any form of political correctness should be stringently outlawed, complete with penalties for any person or entity attempting to reestablish what has proven to be disastrous.

Uniforms, similar to those used by airline stewards and stewardesses, consisting of slacks, business casual shirt and sensible shoes need to replace the costumes typical to today. This would remove the focus in the students’ minds on how they look to what they are doing. Vocabulary should be stringently regulated, even outside of the classroom. I pods, cell phones, and other electronic distractions should be forbidden to be on campus. Those students who simply cannot abide the fact that others in the class may be learning something, will be corralled together with the rest of the Sweathogs and only allowed to learn the core subjects; reading, writing and arithmetic. Outside of the Sweathogs’ den, every school, from middle school on up, will have to teach education tracks relevant to a variety of careers with hands-on labs similar to the shop classes of days gone by.

If we can do this, we will again be the envy of the world. That may up set some, but honestly, would anybody care about that?