Legislators hear tax hike plan

CARSON CITY — Increases in sales, car registration and two other taxes will bring in about $709 million of the $780 million in tax increases that legislative leaders think they must pass before June 1 to limit state budget reductions to a reasonable level.

This Week

MONDAY

Keeping the city safe from taxpaying businesses

The Charleston Antique Mall is one of those seven-day-a-week outfits that rents out space to 45 or so independent antique vendors. Think Victorian furniture, Depression glass, Coca-Cola collectibles, old Elvis records.

An idea so good it had to be kept secret

With the Clark County School District considering furloughs, pay cuts, class-size increases and the elimination of electives and extracurricular activities to weather this terrible recession, you’d think educators would jump at the chance to save $500,000 without sacrificing a single student experience.

Dead bills in Carson City

As the Nevada Legislature nears the end of its session — as voters and taxpayers wait in dread for small cabals of legislators to emerge from their moldy crypts waving hundreds of millions of dollars in economically crippling tax hikes during a recession — various procedural deadlines speed by, allowing numerous pending pieces of legislation to “die on the vine.”

Claudine Williams, 1921-2009

Claudine Williams was born in 1921 in DeSoto Parish, La. She took her first casino job when she was 15, dealing cards at a private club in Bossier Parish.

The cardinals of Carson City

Perhaps the most outrageous thing to come out of the 2009 legislative session won’t necessarily be the ginormous tax hike we’re all about to be hit with, but the behind-closed-doors secrecy by which that plan was concocted.

Without transparency, there is no liberty

“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have … a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean the characters and conduct of their rulers.”

Three GOP wise men

Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee are right. That’s how bad it is for Republicans.

Same-sex marriage

If a man and a woman, or two guys, or two gals desire to bind themselves contractually to what the state calls a “marriage,” then what’s a good ol’ fashioned American conservative to say?

Risks of intimacy necessary for whole and authentic life

We are made for relationship. We are social animals. Yet, we are ambivalent about intimacy: We seek it, we shun it, we long for it, we dodge it. We need it. A whole and authentic life is marked by the ability to forge lasting, intimate relationships.

Slice-and-dice ‘Wolverine’ lacks magic

Bob Mondello, the film critic for National Public Radio, put his finger on the problem of comic book villains in his negative review of “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.”

Calico Early Man Site interesting place to see excavations, artifacts

Visitors to the Calico Early Man Archaeological Site near Barstow, Calif., need to use their imaginations to understand what may have happened there between 135,000 and 200,000 years ago. Instead of the sun-scorched Mojave Desert of today, they must visualize a landscape with lush plains teeming with game bordering ancient Lake Manix, fish-filled and attractive to waterfowl. It would have been attractive to humans living off the bounty of the land, as well.

Inspiring Minds

Communist Carebear stands on his metal pedestal on a file cabinet, surveying students as they try to find their misplaced government homework.

Out There

HIKES

Flowering shrubs can beautify landscape

Flowers are the workhorses of the garden. They’ll dazzle any landscape and they radiate a warm or cool feeling, depending on the colors selected. Here are flowering shrubs and ground covers that are perpetual bloomers through the summer that anyone can rely on to put zip into a landscape.

Bookmark

Here is a listing of events designed for book lovers. Information is subject to change or cancellation without notice. Additions or changes to this listing must be submitted at least 10 days in advance of Sunday publication to Bookmark, Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125. For more information, call 383-0306.

Outdoor Briefs

BE ON THE LOOKOUT

Grab some snacks and get comfy for this year’s Couchies

There will be no awkward banter between presenters. No fancy gift bags. And no Hugh Jackman musical numbers that make you say, “That’s the guy who plays Wolverine? Seriously? That guy?”

The Water Cooler

Here are a few things in news, sports, entertainment and popular culture that we’ve been talking about lately.

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