Opinion

To the editor:

Thursday

The “campaign finance” reformers are back.

John Browning’s Model 1911 pistol, an engineering wonder for its day, still serves as a design platform for much modern pistolsmithing. Old examples, especially with military markings, are now highly prized on the collector market, where they can bring hundreds or even thousands of dollars each.

Less than two decades ago, a relatively unknown state assemblyman named Jim Gibbons authored a simple, one-paragraph tax restraint initiative. His proposal required that any and all tax increases gain a two-thirds supermajority vote of the Legislature in order to pass. Gibbons eventually gathered enough signatures to place this proposal on the statewide ballot, and in the consecutive elections of 1994 and 1996, three of every four voters in Nevada elected to place this amendment in our state’s constitution.

To the editor:

Do you think South Dakotans in 2004 felt like Nevadans feel in 2009? You know, in a Tom Daschle/Harry Reid sort of way.

Whether you accepted a target date of April 1 or April 2, majority Democrats in Carson City vowed that by the end of last week we’d have some firm numbers, telling us how much they plan to spend in their 2009-2010 Nevada state budget, and by how much they propose to jack up taxes to raise all the added loot they seek.

I suspect you are well aware of the big brouhaha concerning the bonuses AIG paid to company executives.

Some on the right can be counted on to rush to superficial and overheated labeling. That often works for the right.