Editorials

The educational product of the Clark County public schools is often disappointing — despite the fact taxpayers in the past 50 years have tripled the amount of money per pupil they pour in, even after adjusting for inflation.

The fact that the Boston Marathon bombing was carried out by two immigrants with ties to mostly Islamic Chechnya will have impacts on many fronts. Unfolding revelations could impact the prospects of immigration reform. And questions still loom as to how and why the Russians apparently warned the CIA that older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a prime candidate for terrorism, whereupon the CIA told the FBI, whereupon … nothing much happened.

After five years as the hardest-hit state of the Great Recession, Nevadans might expect their 2013 Legislature to be asking what it can do to help the state’s surviving entrepreneurs expand their businesses and create new jobs.

The Nevada Assembly last week unanimously OK’d Assembly Bill 407, supposedly designed to clarify Nevada law, making it clear a candidate has to live in the district he intends to represent.

Tourist-oriented Las Vegas is so dependent on timely and efficient air travel that the current political Kabuki of “furloughed” air traffic controllers — causing frustrated travelers to sit for hours on runways in poorly ventilated aircraft — must go on the ironic list of this administrations “special favors” to this town.

Las Vegas is a town known for separating willing tourists from their money with games of chance. But a new legislative audit has found some companies are taking tourists’ money by outright fraud.

In the months before the start of the 2013 Legislature, there appeared to be some political momentum behind a plan to build a domed stadium — described by its backers as a “mega-events center” — on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus. Legislation to create a special taxing district promised to be one of the more important bills of the year.

When weighed against Nevada’s larger failings in mental health care, allegations of patient dumping are small potatoes.

Good public policy is rooted in the details of legislation, not emotional appeals or the good intentions of lawmakers. Too many bills targeting social ills, public safety issues or consumer concerns have passed as a result of political pressure, only to create unintended consequences because of poorly considered language.

The Clark County Commission no longer has any business running University Medical Center. The region’s only public hospital loses nearly $2 million every week. Everyone who has looked at the accounting in recent years agrees that annual taxpayer bailouts approaching $100 million won’t last forever.