Editorials

The value of having large, private ambulance companies doing business in Southern Nevada was on display after the May 3 Floyd Mayweather-Marcos Maidana fight at the MGM Grand Garden. A loud bang triggered a stampede of fans fearful of gunfire, leaving dozens of people hurt, 60 people treated for injuries and 24 people in various hospitals.

Colleges and universities like to promote themselves as open-minded bastions of diversity. They strive to fill their campuses with people of different races and backgrounds.

The city of Henderson has taken some criticism in recent weeks, and rightly so, by getting its financial house in order on the backs of its residents. The municipality is cutting services, increasing fees and might yet raise property taxes, rather than enacting much-needed changes in employee compensation. With the effects of the Great Recession lingering, many of those same residents are still underwater or treading water on the houses and businesses subject to those property taxes.

There are plenty of second-hand accounts of armed militiamen patrolling the Bunkerville-Mesquite area of northeastern Clark County. According to these stories, the men are limiting the movements of regular folks who just want to get on with life after last month’s high-profile confrontation between the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and rancher Cliven Bundy.

Drought throughout the Colorado River basin is shrinking Lake Mead and threatening the long-term water supply of the Las Vegas Valley and other users. The solution to future shortages is simple: the creation of a free market where users buy shares and the natural forces of supply and demand are guaranteed to put the resource to its most productive use. (Hint: It’s not agriculture.)

Hardly a day goes by without more depressing news about the effects of the Affordable Care Act, on both the state and national levels. And what’s likely to come next has the potential to affect far more Nevadans than did the initial rollout back in October.

School choice is rightfully touted as a way to improve student achievement and campus accountability through competition. But school choice is a solution for another problem in our schools: bullying.

Trying to increase city revenues at the expense of public safety isn’t a good trade-off for taxpayers. But that’s exactly what’s happening as a result of the Las Vegas Fire Department’s heavy-handed suppression of patient transports by private-sector ambulance company American Medical Response.

As majority leader of the U.S. Senate, Harry Reid is supposed to lead. The Nevada Democrat should be focused on the concerns of Americans and on shaping debate on important matters of national interest.