By: Chuck Muth
Nevada News and Views

TODAY’S NN&V HEADLINES

• You Might Be a RINO If… (Chuck Muth) – So what exactly is a RINO?
• The Growth of Homeschooling in Nevada (Elissa Wahl) – By now you probably know someone that homeschools, or know of someone who knows someone….but are you still falling for that old myth of “What About Socialization?”
• It’s Time to Opt Out of Senator Reid’s Government Health Care Utopia (Danny Tarkanian) – In the very near future, Senator Reid is going follow Speaker Pelosi’s lead and try to pass his Senate version of the liberal utopian health care plan – a full, unabashed socialist-style takeover of our nation’s health care system.
• Labor Unions Appeal to Political Allies, Scramble for Work in Tough Times (Mike Chamberlain/Nevada News Bureau) – For years Nevadans joked that the state bird was the crane – the construction crane. But with the mortgage meltdown, the credit crunch and the recession, construction has now ground to a virtual halt. The cranes have begun disappearing.
• Time to Outlaw Public Employee Unions (Warner Todd Huston) – What happens when a private sector union gets far too many benefits to the point where the business for which its membership works goes under or whose existence is threatened? Punishment. Unfortunately, there is no such corrective for union overreach for government employees.

Click here to read these stories at the Nevada News & Views site!

MUTHS TRUTHS

• In addition to Senator-in-Waiting Dean Heller, former Gov. Kenny Guinn and the United States Marines, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle is coming down from Reno to join us for this week’s First Friday Happy Hour and Christmas Party this Friday from 5-7 pm at Stoney’s on the south end of the Strip.
• Gov. Jim Gibbons said this morning that Sen. Harry Reid’s version of Obama-Care includes “a mandatory expansion of the Nevada Medicaid program” which “would add more than 41,000 people to the program’s rolls in 2014” and “cost Nevada taxpayers more than $613 million in state General Fund dollars between 2014 and 2019.” Gibbons added that “this bill will cripple or bankrupt the state’s general fund, costing taxpayers money at a time they can least afford it.” Lovely.
• The Southern Nevada Health District announced yet another swine flu death in Clark County yesterday as the government continues to ration the swine flu vaccine and decide which citizens get it and which citizens don’t. Obama-Care supporters, ye be warned.
• President Barack Obama is hosting a dog-and-pony “Jobs Summit” today in which he’ll try to hide the fact that some 3 million Americans have lost their jobs since his and Harry Reid’s “stimulus” plan was approved by Congress. Unfortunately, the head of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, Kara Kelly, will reportedly participate in this keister-covering White House charade.
• As for any “path to citizenship” for illegal aliens residing in the U.S. today, here’s what it should be: The exact same path to citizenship that everyone else must go through to get into the United States legally – only illegals should be required to move to the back on the line, not to the front of it.
• In a recent fundraising letter (hat tip: Ralston’s Flash), Republican Brian Sandoval says it’s time to “set a new direction” for Nevada and that’s why he decided to run for governor. He says he wants to reduce the size of government, no new taxes, help small businesses, make the government more efficient, etc. New direction? That’s the same direction Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons has been going for the last three years.
• The Associated Press reports that “Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons has asked agency heads for plans to reduce their budgets by 1.4 percent and 3 percent in light of continued revenue shortfalls.” Of course, if the Legislature hadn’t increased spending by about a billion dollars over and above what the governor’s budget called for last January in the first place, this wouldn’t be necessary.
• Unfortunate but necessary layoffs in the private sector continue, as Binion’s Gambling Hall closes down its hotel tower and lays off 100 employees, while the Las Vegas Sun consolidates and lays off 20. Remind me again how many government workers have been laid off during this recession?
• Just two weeks after well-respected and well-established pro-life leaders in Nevada came out publicly in opposition to the proposed “Personhood” initiative being pushed by out-of-state interests, Richard Ziser, the initiative’s lead sponsor in Nevada, has suddenly quit the effort for “personal and family considerations.” That pretty much drives the final nail into this effort’s coffin here.

OTHER NEWS & VIEWS

• Governor Jim Gibbons responded yesterday to a Harry Reid letter regarding K-12 education in Nevada, essentially but politely telling johnny-come-lately Reid to blow it out his…er, tailpipe. Read it HERE
• The Las Vegas Review-Journal weighs in on the ridiculous state law “that prevents classroom data measuring student performance from being used to reward or punish individual teachers.”
• Assemblyman Ed Goedhart says a “bureaucratic decision” by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is turning a retreat for a church group “into a patch of hell” purportedly to help the speckled dace. Another heavy-handed property rights “taking” by environmental extremists in the government. Read all about it HERE

TUBE TIPS

Republican Las Vegas City Councilman Stavros Anthony goes Face to Face with Jon Ralston tonight. The program airs on Las Vegas ONE on Cox Channel 19 at 5:30 pm, 6:30 pm and 8:00 pm. http://www.lasvegassun.com/videos/face-face/

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

“The American people do not need a daylong seminar on how to create jobs, least of all from many of the people responsible for creating this recession in the first place. We already had a large and successful jobs summit in this country: it was called the 1980s. The failed Obama stimulus has proven once again that government cannot create jobs, except perhaps fake ones in fictional congressional districts. Real jobs are created when real entrepreneurs have a realistic expectation of a return on their investments.” – Club for Growth President Chris Chocola

HELP WANTED

Freelance “Stringers” – Volunteers wanted to write interesting op-eds or engage in targeted “citizen journalism” around the state. If you have a gift for the written word and an interest in government and/or politics, please contact Nevada News Bureau editor Elizabeth Crum at [email protected]

CALENDAR

• December 4: Nevada “Newsmaker Briefing” with Rep. Dean Heller (R-Nevada) sponsored by Citizen Outreach Foundation and the Nevada News Bureau.
• December 4: First Friday Happy Hour Brewhaha and CHRISTMAS (not “Holiday”) Party in Las Vegas. VIP guests include Nevada Congressman Dean Heller, former Governor and First Lady Kenny and Dema Guinn….and the United States Marines! Please bring a new, unwrapped toy for their Toys for Tots campaign. Visit www.FirstFridayNevada.com
• December 4: First Friday Happy Hour RENO at 5:30 pm at the Prospectors Lounge in Harrah’s downtown. Bring a an unwrapped gift for a child and get a discount on the great eats at Harrah’s. The gifts will benefit Kid’s Kottage emergency shelter.
• December 15: Center-right coalition meeting co-hosted by Citizen Outreach and the Nevada Policy Research Institute at 8:30 am. Invitation only.