Another effort in Washington this past week to rein in the executive branch’s power to grab Western land and take it out of productive use was strangled in its crib by Democratic senators. Utah Sen. Mike Lee tried to amend a Senate energy bill by adding a provision limiting a president’s power under the Antiquities Act of 1906 to create new national monuments without the … [Read more...]
Governor offering a way to save sage grouse and mining
Gov. Brian Sandoval is imploring the Interior Department to accept a state-created alternative to its proposed draconian plan to remove millions of acres of federal public land from productive use — specifically mining — as a way of paying lip service to saving greater sage grouse habitat. In September the federal agency declined to list the bird under the Endangered Species … [Read more...]
Hage case: One judge’s bias is another’s hard-earned experience
Earlier this month a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals printed out for the various federal public land agencies in the West a license to steal. The court kicked the quarter-century-old fight between the Pine Creek Ranch near Tonopah and federal land managers back to the federal court in Nevada, ordering the court to assess damages against the ranch … [Read more...]
Lawsuit challenges practice of state gifts to private companies
Earlier this month the Nevada Supreme Court heard arguments on procedural matters in a case that seeks to have declared unconstitutional the state’s practice of handing out gifts to businesses that agree to operate in Nevada and create jobs. The plaintiff in the case is Michael Little, owner of a company that converts recycled landscape trimmings into biomass, a renewable … [Read more...]
Five years later, owners of church retreat still await justice
While media attention has been focused on a brace of Bunkerville Bundy brothers bunking with some buddies bearing arms in federal buildings in a wildlife refuge near Burns, Ore., in a futile gesture of protest over the mistreatment of a local ranching family by federal land agencies, those same federal land agencies have been literally washing away a 40-acre tract of private … [Read more...]
If you can’t trust Dear Abby, whom can you trust?
A Dear Abby column published in November brought a strong rebuttal from the Catholic Health Association that ran last week. Sister Carol Keehan, president and CEO of the association, wrote that Dear Abby columnist Jeanne Phillips “asserted that it is Catholic policy to save the life of the baby over the mother in obstetrical emergencies.” “This inaccurate statement has … [Read more...]
Nevada is killing jobs it spent tax money to attract
Sometimes the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Two years ago the Governor’s Office of Economic Development doled out $1.2 million to entice rooftop solar panel installer SolarCity to open an office in Nevada and create jobs. This past week the governor-appointed Public Utilities Commission became the Governor’s Office of Economic Dismemberment, issuing … [Read more...]
Lawmakers spending money to entice new business is a bad bet
Hard on the heels of slapping existing taxpayers with $1.5 billion in new levies, our ever considerate lawmakers on Saturday overwhelmingly passed a package of bills that play Santa to a potential new business by doling out tax breaks and promises of infrastructure improvement totaling upwards of $335 million. Gov. Brian Sandoval signed the bills shortly after Legislature … [Read more...]