wellbeing

Editor’s note: The following was written by Yetti De Luca, Carson High School’s District Work-Based Learning Coordinator.

Sergio Trejo Jr., a Las Vegas native and first-generation college graduate, visited several Carson City schools recently to share his inspiring story about his admittance to medical school. Trejo presented to more than 150 students.

Recently, SkillsUSA had its Regional Photography Competition, and all five participating CHS students are going to State. SkillsUSA is a career and technical student organization serving more than 395,000 high school, college, and middle school students across the nation in trade training programs and technical and skilled service occupations, including health occupations.

Jack Phillips, a Colorado Christian cake artist, was known for his custom-designed masterpieces. In 2012, two men asked him to prepare a special cake for a local celebration of their upcoming Massachusetts marriage. At the time, Colorado law did not allow same-sex marriage.

Phillips politely declined, saying his religious faith didn’t allow him to participate expressly via his art in celebrating their marriage. He offered to sell them any product he made, but he wouldn’t prepare one specifically endorsing a gay union (nor Halloween, alcohol or nudity).

CARSON CITY — Wetlands are the link between land and water: where the flow of water, the cycling of nutrients, and the energy of the sun meet to produce highly productive ecosystems with unique plant and animal life.

This fourth column on the Controller’s Annual Report (CAR) analyzes state taxes. Nevada collected $5.523 billion in taxes in fiscal year 2017, which was 41 percent of total state revenues. As discussed in our previous column, program revenues made up 56 percent, with miscellaneous items at three percent.

The largest tax sources were sales and use taxes ($1.285 billion or 23 percent of general revenues of $5.895 billion), gaming taxes ($897 million or 16 percent) and unemployment assessments ($825 million, or ten percent). All other taxes totaled $2.516 billion, or 43 percent).

his is the second column based on the Controller’s Annual Report for fiscal year 2017 (FY17). Here we disclose where the state spends its money.

Total state spending for FY17 was $12.29 billion: $11.033 billion (90 percent) from regular state accounts, including pass-through federal funds; $1.211 billion (ten percent) from tuition, fees, contracts, grants and other service charges by higher education; and $46 million in two other areas. The total was 74 percent higher than in FY06, or 17 percent more in real per-person terms.

When Ron was in law school, on the first day of his class on income tax law, the professor was singing praises of income taxes and got carried away. The prof, an expert who had written the book on the subject, said that income tax law is good law because it’s not an all-or-nothing thing like much of civil or criminal law. Instead, it’s proportional.

That’s true, of course, although not quite the high virtue he seemed to suggest. Anyway, when he said the income tax was perhaps one of mankind’s great inventions, Ron objected.

Congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump have passed a landmark tax reduction and reform bill. Democrats, mainstream media and other leftists are spreading misinformation about the effects.

Let’s set the record straight.

First, “The new law is larded with provisions custom-made for the rich and superrich while offering mere crumbs for the middle class.” This version of a lie told by many comes from Democrat Alan Blinder, who also said, “it may be the most regressive” tax cut ever.

In the 100th anniversary of communism last month, three points stood out.
First, polls say half of America’s millennials would rather live under socialism or communism than capitalism.

Second, the reality of communism was, horrifically, exactly the opposite of the naïve view held by today’s young and by many people around the world in the last century.

Third, the essential faults and failures of communism also characterize all government to some degree, especially democratic socialism, progressivism and statist liberalism.

Republicans in congress have introduced their tax bills, and they and the president intend to pass some version of tax reform promptly. As they try to craft a package that will pass, let’s recall themain principles, goals and problems facing tax reform.

The key goal is always economic growth. Growing the economy at a sustainably fast clip means on average everyone is better off and each person or family has more opportunity to improve their lot. It also allows us to afford more of the public goods that government can supply, including caring for the needy.

The Carson City Library is in the running for the National Medal for Museum and Library Service, which “honors outstanding libraries and museums that contribute significantly to the wellbeing of their communities.”

In our last column, we discussed the Civil Rights movement that hugely changed America in the 20th Century and greatly redeemed the failure of our Founding (allowing slavery) and the Democrat and KKK legacy of bigotry, oppression and discrimination known as Jim Crow.

We pointed out that government, plus the social, economic and political Establishment, was the enforcer of slavery and Jim Crow. And that the reforms overshot their mark, leading to pernicious reverse discrimination that now travels under the euphemism of diversity.

Carson Tahoe Health, a leading healthcare system in Northern Nevada, and The Greenhouse Project, an agricultural and education-based nonprofit, announced an expanded partnership Thursday to build the Foothill Garden on Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center’s campus.

Our Founders and the classical liberal intellectuals they followed got the basics of government right and thus launched two centuries of freedom and opportunity leading to hope, unprecedented economic growth and astounding human flourishing and wellbeing.

However, a century later a counter movement arose and has continued to gain until now, undermining freedom and opportunity and diminishing hope, growth, wellbeing and flourishing.

This is the sixth column in a series presenting findings and conclusions of Nevada’s 2016 Popular Annual Financial Report (PAFR), posted at controller.nv.gov. Here, we address the economic outlook.

In Nevada’s 2015 PAFR, we proffered an economic outlook focused on the long term. We identified four long-term secular trends that have suppressed US economic growth over the last decade – thus explaining the “new normal.” By their nature, these trends will continue to retard growth for the foreseeable future absent significant changes in public policy.

We are humanists and, so, optimists.

Against us in the political sphere stand environmentalists and other anti-humanists. These folks see not progress, but threat, in seemingly everything done by man.

We see man as being born into an uncertain and challenging world. In a state of nature, earthquakes, tornadoes and other disasters combine with infections and shortages of food, shelter and other basic resources to threaten man's very survival. But over centuries, humans have applied their intelligence to shape the world around them.

Nevada Leaders Oppose Question 2:

“As Governor and a former Federal Judge, I have seen first-hand the negative effects that marijuana for recreational purposes can have on our state and our communities. Proponents of this measure claim it will help education, it will not. What it will do is create health and safety problems that Nevada cannot afford. Legalizing marijuana would have devastating consequences for our state and for Nevada families and I would ask that voters join with me and Vote No on 2 when they head to the polls this fall.” – Governor Brian Sandoval

While immigration has become a controversial topic in national politics, two organizations have been working together for the last decade to help Latinos in the local community with immigration issues and other challenges.

The Consulate of Mexico in Las Vegas offers mobile consular services through United Latino Community, a Carson City area nonprofit formerly known as Nevada Hispanic Services.

The Salvation Army is collecting backpacks and school supplies for disadvantaged children through August 17. Children from Carson City, Douglas County and Lyon County will receive backpacks and school supplies as needed. The Salvation Army will have a distribution of the back packs and a large portion of the back packs collected will be given directly to the School Districts for distribution to children in transition.

Gov. Brian Sandoval and his allies don’t think voters should have a say on the commerce tax they snuck through in the closing hours of last year’s legislature.
They're entitled to their views. However, they’ve been wildly misrepresenting key facts about the matter and about the actions and words of Ron, who is leading the effort to repeal the tax. Below, we set them and the record straight.

“I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy … geography … commerce and agriculture in order to give their children the right to study painting, poetry, music and architecture …”

“No pain, no gain!” For years, exercise buffs have encouraged people to hit the gym with this phrase.
Would as many have been eager to get off the couch if the rallying cry had been, “All pain, no gain”?

In our last column, we specified the duty of elected public officials: a fiduciary duty to voters, taxpayers and the broad public interest. Not, as some people claim, to government institutions such as the system of higher education, the military or some social service agency.

What’s the duty of an elected public official?

Three years ago, when Ron served on the board of regents, Nevada’s elected body that governs public higher education, that board held a big discussion on system governance at one of its meetings. It was “facilitated” by a woman with a long background in higher education administration, including having been a college president.

In the early 1970s, as assistant city engineer in Urbana, where I attended the University of Illinois, I worked on bikeways, sewer systems to minimize pollution, promoting underground power and telephone lines, and other “green” projects. Later, as a university research engineer, I worked on many other environmental, energy and policy issues.

As Carson City residents prepare to welcome 2016, there is something to be said about the annual tradition of making New Year’s resolutions.

The practice can be traced back to ancient Babylon, where Babylonians would make promises to their gods to pay their debts and return borrowed objects at the start of every new year. The concept of making a new year resolution is now widely practiced today around the world.

Unfortunately, the world has a history of breaking New Year’s resolutions about as long as it does of making them.

I think the irony of the Ashley Madison hacking story is probably what prompted me to write this article about personal privacy. While a large number of people desire to keep their personal activities secret, it is amazing to compare the “small number of Ashley Madison users” to the enormous number of us who appear to be conducting much of our lives openly on the web through Facebook and many other sites.

Matthew Baldwin, a 24-year-old graduate student at University of Nevada, Reno, was last seen Tuesday, August 25, 2015. Roommates and campus faculty say they have not seen him for a week. University Police believe Baldwin left campus in his vehicle to an unknown destination and has not contacted his employer, family or friends with his whereabouts.

“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines – hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death …”

So began The Population Bomb, a 1968 advocacy book by Dr. Paul Ehrlich. He indicted American affluence and uncontrolled procreation as key parts of the over-population apocalypse he foresaw and thus as pernicious problems to be solved by Draconian public-sector and even international action.

Wally Cuchine, a champion of the Arts, officially retired April 8 with a big send up from people from around the State, including proclamations of “Wally Cuchine Day” from Governor Brian Sandoval and Reno Mayor Bob Cashell at a concert at the Eureka Opera House with Ralph Cuda and the Dixieland Boys.