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*Opinions expressed here may or may not reflect the views of the Fernley Republican Women. Blog posts should not be considered an endorsement from the FRW.

Friends in Service Helping: Great Service to the Needy

6/22/2021

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​Our family has enthusiastically supported FISH (Friends in Service Helping) since coming to Nevada in 2001.  It is northern and western Nevada’s all-purpose “hand up, not a handout” that helps folks turn their lives around.
Recently, FISH published anonymously a letter from a former client.  With permission, I reprint parts of it here.
“When I first came to FISH in 2019 needing help, I didn’t really even know what I needed.  I had been chronically homeless for about 15 of the past 20 years.  Always dwelling in cars, which led to a false sense of security.  Or maybe it was a ‘new normal’ that became so etched in my being that I thought I had become free of needing four walls and a door.  Living in a car felt normal at that point.
“But I was running out of roads with shrinking options.  My health had deteriorated severely to where even a minor infection became a big deal.  The only food I could chew and digest was expensive proteins, and I couldn’t afford it because I was putting every dime into my dying car.
Mostly, FISH offered me solace from the streets.  It wasn’t a place to ‘hang out’ but it was a place where I didn’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not – [a place] without judgment.
“They fed me, gave me a place to wash my clothes and take a shower, and offered baby wipes for those times when I needed to clean up but was too far away or unable to get to FISH.  They gave me referrals for other assistance that mostly didn’t work for me because (unbelievably) my SSDI income was too high to qualify for any other assistance.  I was trying to get out of the maze, and the sustenance FISH offered helped me stay hopeful and prepared me to meet the change I was looking for.  (…)
“In January of 2020, we all had a new challenge in our lives, called COVID. …  I came to FISH where I think I saw Becca there again, who said again I should seek help from Curtis Butler at the VSO. … [H]e told me he could at least get me a motel room for a couple of weeks. (…)
“Two weeks felt like an eternity to stay sheltered in a motel.  I had finally received a section 8 voucher (13 years after first making applications) on March 2nd, but there were no apartment vacancies (…)
“I remember all of these ‘lasts’.  Last food bag at FISH, last shower, last good home-cooked meal, last conversations with people who were trying to help instill HOPE in me that change was coming.  But all I saw were dead ends, everywhere.
“Yet, I know that as futile as the situation seemed to me, I was at a starting point.  I know most homeless people were realizing they were situated to die in a pandemic, due to being unhoused.  I’m not so special to think that I deserved to be spared from it.  I think if I had never gone to FISH looking for assistance, I could have easily ended up using a grocery cart to transport my belongings after losing my car, and sleeping on the streets – where so many ‘yets’ were waiting for me.
“I found an apartment that would accept my voucher, and Curtis paid for the security deposit.
“Now, I am fortunate to be able to donate some resources back to FISH.  It will never match what I received there.
“FISH helped me keep looking for ways out of the rat maze.  …  I was looking for a way out, and the route is a different way for everyone.  FISH doesn’t use a cookie-cutter approach to the clients.  They recognize every person is a unique individual.  If I am your only success story, then you have solid proof that what you are doing is heading in the right direction.
“My story is just one of thousands.  I’m a success story because you left the door open.  And inside the door, compassionate care is delivered every day to many untold storytellers.”
People seeking a good use of their time, talents and treasure should contact FISH.
Ron Knecht is a Senior Policy Fellow at the Nevada Policy Research Institute.  Previously, he served Nevadans as State Controller, a higher education Regent, Senior Economist, college teacher and Assemblyman.  Contact him at RonKnecht@aol.com. 
Ron Knecht

775-882-2935
775-220-6128
 
www.RonKnecht.net
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ProPublica, NYT & Other Leftists’ Ignorance on Taxes

6/15/2021

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​“A jaw-dropping report by ProPublica detailing how America’s richest men avoided paying taxes has intensified interest in Congress, even among some Republicans, in changing the tax code to that ensure people like Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffet pay their fair share.” – a June 9 New York Times (NYT) headline.
The only thing jaw-dropping about the report and its fawning coverage by the NYT and other lamestream media is how completely ignorant, dishonest, envious, avaricious and wantonly destructive of human wellbeing and flourishing their proposals would be.
The extreme left-wing ProPublica advocacy group evaluated the federal income tax as if it were a wealth tax, a very different animal with very different consequences, including destruction of any economy and society unless the wealth tax rate were very low.
The report evaluates selected results of our income tax in wealth-tax terms.  But it doesn’t even attempt to justify this bait-and-switch fraud, proceeding as if a wealth tax – their “true tax rate” – is self-evidently fair and in the public interest, while it certainly is neither.
In a future column, I’ll address some misinformation and chicanery involved, such as:
·       The report is based on leaked confidential Internal Revenue Service data on 15 years of tax data on thousands of people.  ProPublica is not legally entitled to such data, and it did not disclose its sources.
·       It studiously ignores key points such as: the top half of taxpayers by income paid 97 percent of income-tax revenues in the most recent year for which data are available.  The bottom half paid three percent.
·       The top one percent of earners paid 38.5 percent of income taxes while the bottom 90 percent paid only 29.9 percent.
·       And the top one percent also paid a 26.8 percent average individual income-tax rate, more than six times higher than the four percent for taxpayers in the bottom 50 percent.
Here, I’ll address the misrepresentations about wealth taxes advocated by ProPublica and the media.  I carry no brief for the 25 rich people in their report, just one for the public interest in economic growth (aggregate human wellbeing) and fairness.
I first understood this matter 50 years ago as an Assistant City Engineer in Urbana, Illinois.  The lesson came courtesy of the crotchety old Public Works Director who was a Republican, while I was an ignorant statist liberal progressive Democrat.
I advocated the kind of income and wealth redistribution nonsense ProPublica and the media now promote.  He pointed out simply that if people had roughly equal income and wealth levels, it would make significant investment in major enterprises (a/k/a “capital formation”) impossible.
Thus, if everyone had roughly $70,000 in annual income (the U.S. gross domestic product divided by our population), no entrepreneur could raise in reasonable time and cost the billions of dollars required for an electric vehicle industry.  Nor wind and solar energy sources.  Nor for high-speed rail or concert hall projects.
Government financing of such projects is even more ridiculous, as shown by the cost and schedule overruns and poor performance of water projects, bridges to nowhere and crosstown highways.
The day of the NYT report, an editorial cartoon ran showing spaceships launched from earth bearing the Bezos and Musk names.  Space aliens watching from a flying saucer comment: “The male earthlings are overcompensating again.”  The irony is that capital formation has allowed these entrepreneurs to restart space travel after the government recently proved its ineptitude at that venture.
Fairness?
ProPublica and the media either don’t understand or cynically deny that in a mostly market economy, people get income and accumulate wealth generally in proportion to the value they deliver to other folks, and thus in proportion to their contribution to society and the public interest.  That essential fairness is not found in redistribution and government provision.
Also, wealth taxes would require people with unrealized capital gains (much of the wealth of the 25) to either sell stock, driving down the value of enterprises, or borrow large sums.  Also, if wealth were taxed, would immense capital losses such as those not infrequently incurred require the government to pay tax rebates to those suffering the losses?
The income tax is destructive enough.  Similar revenues from wealth taxes would be disastrous.
Ron Knecht is a Senior Policy Fellow at the Nevada Policy Research Institute.  Previously, he served Nevadans as State Controller, a higher education Regent, Senior Economist, college teacher and legislator.  Contact him at RonKnecht@aol.com. 
Ron Knecht

775-882-2935
775-220-6128
 
www.RonKnecht.net
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The Federal Budget: Spending, Taxes, Deficit & Debt

6/1/2021

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​President Joe Biden released his record-setting proposed budget last week.  Here I’ll try to describe the particulars in terms of the basics: spending, taxes, deficits and debt, all relative to the total economy as measured by the gross domestic product (GDP).
Biden’s proposed fiscal year 2022 (FY22) federal spending total is $6-trillion, or $2-trillion more than in FY19.  FY19 figures serve as reference points because the COVID pandemic greatly distorted the FY20 and FY21 (current year) figures. 
The $6-trillion spending total for FY22 would be 25.4 percent of projected GDP of $23.6-trillion.  His budget projects total federal spending will remain at nearly 25 percent for the rest of this decade.
The average since World War II and before the pandemic was 19.4 percent, and no single year in that period reached 25 percent.  Our economy is growing faster now than in recent years as people and businesses emerge from the shutdowns ordered by governments the last 15 months.  So, instead of increasing spending relative to the GDP, we should be reining it in, according to Keynesian orthodoxy.
Under Biden’s budget, federal spending would exceed $45,000 per household next year.  And more spending proposals are expected later.
The largest part of the spending is “transfer payments”, the income and other support paid by government to people and businesses.  This share of federal spending has risen from 27.7 percent in FY64 when President Lyndon Johnson launched his Great Society programs to 70 percent in FY19.  It is the tail that wags the dog, because these mandatory programs are on auto-pilot and do not require annual Congressional appropriations.
The remaining spending, $1.52-trillion for FY22, is called “discretionary” and includes $770-billion in defense and homeland security spending, an increase of 1.5 percent from FY19, or a net decline in real terms because inflation is expected to be 2 percent.  The $770-billion is less than 3.3 percent of expected GDP.  Defense spending relative to the total budget has shrunk from 46.2 percent in FY64 to 15.4 percent in FY19.
Other large discretionary spending items would get increases of 23.4 percent (Health and Human Services), 40.8 percent (Education) and 15.2 percent (Housing and Urban Development).
To finance all this spending, Biden proposes $3-trillion in tax increases over this decade, the largest tax hike relative to GDP since 1968.  His tax increases would undo the 2017 tax reform that lifted business investment and increased wages, especially for lower earners.  They would also hobble the supply side of the economy as it tries to meet the post-pandemic demand growth.
Biden proposes to retroactively raise long-term capital gains taxes to 43.4 percent, a modern high.  And to raise the corporate rate from 21 percent to 28 percent.  He would hike the top marginal rate for individuals from 37 percent to 39.6 percent.
Progressives have made many proposals to soak the rich and corporations.  Even if they did not destroy the economy – and they would – the sum of all of them would not cover the projected $1.8-trillion FY22 deficit, or 7.6 percent of the economy.  So, taxing the middle class, which is where the money is, would be necessary, contrary to Biden’s election pledge and his continuing insistence it won’t happen.
The increasing recent deficits and those proposed by Biden are driving our publicly held national debt from high levels in 2019 past dangerous levels now and toward catastrophic levels later this decade.  At 79.2 percent in 2019, the debt was increasing toward the 90 percent figure that major economic research has found to be the danger zone.  This year it is estimated to rise to 109.7 percent, and Biden’s proposals would hike it to 117 percent by 2031.
The $44-trillion debt in ten years would be more than $300,000 per household.
The budget document estimates that annual interest payments on the debt will more than double by this decade’s end.  But it assumes the Federal Reserve won’t raise interest rates much from the record low levels to which it has held them in recent years.  Further, it assumes America’s creditors will be satisfied with current federal interest rates, despite inflation and financial risk from higher spending, taxes, deficits and debt.
Biden’s budget would be a disaster for America.
Ron Knecht, MS, JD & PE(CA), is a Senior Policy Fellow at the Nevada Policy Research Institute.  He has served Nevadans as State Controller, a higher education Regent, Senior Economist, college teacher and legislator.  Contact him at RonKnecht@aol.com.  
Ron Knecht

775-882-2935
775-220-6128
 
www.RonKnecht.net
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New York Times: World Facing Population Implosion

5/25/2021

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​“All over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history that will make first-birthday parties a rarer sight than funerals, and empty homes a common eyesore.”
That was the lede in the top story in Sunday’s New York Times.  It’s a recognition of a reality I first addressed a decade ago but which progressives, statists and Greens have denied.
They have lived on the dire alarmist prophesies of Paul Ehrlich from half-a-century ago.  The prologue of his 1968 book, The Population Bomb, began:
“The battle to feed all of humanity is over.  In the 1970’s the world will undergo famines – hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.  At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate, although many lives could be saved through dramatic programs to ‘stretch’ the carrying capacity of the earth by increasing food production.  But these programs will only provide a stay of execution unless they are accompanied by determined and successful efforts at population control.”
Because such ideologues live on repeating simple narratives to support their collectivist political plans and not on actual science such as analyzing new data, they have insisted for 50 years that exponential population growth is inevitable and will lead to world-wide cataclysm.
Ten years ago, in my work on cost of capital (or typical returns on investments), I began to examine population growth rates and the demographic structures of economies.  This was important to determining future expected returns because those returns depend on expected economic growth rates, which depend in part on population growth rates.  I noted that birth rates, and thus population growth in the US, had been declining since the turn of the century.
Looking more widely at birth rates and population growth rates around the world, I learned that population implosion was already evident in Japan, Russia, Italy and Germany, among other countries.  And birth rates were falling nearly everywhere.  They have plummeted in China due to its evil one-child policy, which will cause that country significant economic and social problems in coming years.
Why the decline?  Research indicates that birth rates are an inverse function of women’s education levels and family income levels.  That is, as education and income levels rise, birth rates fall.  In some parts of India and Africa, birth rates are even lower than would be indicated by education and income levels.  However, Africa continues to have the highest birth rates.  I discussed these matters in speaking presentations and mentioned them in my Controller’s Annual Reports.
During the tepid economic recovery of the 2010’s, economic growth was slow and birth rates continued to fall.  So, as the Times reports now:
“Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy.  Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China.  Universities in South Korea can’t find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land turned into parks.
“Like an avalanche, the demographic forces – pushing more deaths than births – seem to be expanding and accelerating. … Demographers now predict that by the latter half of the century or possibly earlier, global population will enter a sustained decline for the first time.  …
“The strain of longer lives and low fertility, leading to fewer workers and more retirees, threatens to upend how societies are organized.”
This is what I have named the population implosion.
I first learned skepticism of Ehrlich’s population bomb shortly after he published his book, when I worked as a Research Assistant to Professor Julian Simon at the University of Illinois.  Simon understood that more people interacting with each other led to more invention, insight, innovation and economic and human growth.
I next worked for the UofI Energy Research Group, a de facto affiliate of the Club of Rome and Limits to Growth folks.  So, I was inculcated in their alarmist Green ideology.
Meantime, Simon made a famous bet with Ehrlich whether real-world results would support over five years the alarmists or Simon’s cornucopians.  Simon won.  Now, longer history has shown the alarmists are wrong on a much broader scale.
Ron Knecht is a Senior Policy Fellow with the Nevada Policy Research Institute.  He has served Nevadans as State Controller, a higher Education Regent, Senior Economist, college teacher and legislator.  Contact him at RonKnecht@aol.com. 
Ron Knecht

775-882-2935
775-220-6128
 
www.RonKnecht.net
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Critical Theory, Systemic Racism, Social Justice & Equity: All Lies

5/18/2021

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​The terms critical (race) theory, systemic racism, social justice and equity have become so common in conversation, public policy debate and politics that readers of this column have doubtlessly heard more of them than they’d like to.  Here I argue that they are so ill-defined as to be meaningless at best and just plain lies in their common uses.
According to Wikipedia, “Critical theory is a Marxist approach to social philosophy that focuses on reflective assessment and critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures.”  It was pioneered in the 1930s in Germany, drawing on ideas of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud.  Instead of being a neutral attempt to describe and analyze reality, it is an agenda for political change, especially revolution.
Marxism divides people into socio-economic classes and seeks to find a path for lower classes to overthrow upper classes.  Critical theory, as developed in the 1980s and 1990s in academe, divides people into other classes and seeks to show the allegedly disadvantaged classes how to overthrow the advantaged classes.
In critical race theory, the classes are defined by racial and ethnic groups, with whites being the privileged group to be overthrown and subjugated.
The fundamental problem with critical theory is it assumes its groups or collectives are the fundamental elements of society.  And further that the members of each subjugated group, however defined (e.g., by income, ethnicity, etc.), have enough common interests to be cohesive on a sustained basis and to oppose the dominant group also on a sustained basis and for meritorious cause.
Thus, it assumes without any real attempt at proof that the dominant group unfairly exploits the dominated groups.  It simply asserts there’s no cost to members of the dominant group to continuously conspire to oppress the dominated groups.  For example, tech entrepreneurs will willingly deprive their start-ups of outstanding Indian programmers to employ and promote less-qualified whites.
Ask yourself: Have you experienced or observed such self-destructive behavior?  Or are there other reasons for certain outcomes, such as the problems customers have with communications?  For critical theory ideologues, ethnic prejudice motivates people so much as to squeeze out other motivations.
The problem with critical theory is the ridiculous assumption that people define themselves mainly by their membership in a particular group and their animus toward other groups.  Thus, people want a common language not because it makes all interaction easier and more effective, but because they want to oppress people who don’t speak that language.
Systemic racism is the assumption that such problems have become so widely and deeply embedded in society, even without the dominant groups recognizing it or meaning to, that nearly all interactions involving members of the subjugated groups with dominant group members are inherently unfair.  The net effect of all this is to continuously and systemically oppress those groups, thus resulting in nearly all members of the dominant group being unfairly advantaged and those in the other groups unfairly disadvantaged.
The problem again is analyzing society in terms of collectives and seeking to find a collective-based approach to remedying everything.  That is, the solution is coercive collectivism, such as affirmative action.
Social justice denies that the only meaningful basis for justice is individual action, responsibility and accountability.  It misses the fundamental point that collective responsibility and reward or punishment is never fair or just, but always unfair and unjust.  Some members of any group, dominant or dominated, are completely innocent and some are guilty.  Group “justice” punishes the innocent wrongly and the culpable not enough.
Social justice, consistently applied, would conclude that blacks are not as a rule better basketball players than whites.  Instead, by some hidden means not including merit, they are capturing 80 percent of professional basketball positions.  And that must be remedied by government intervention.
Finally, “equity” is a cynical attempt to displace the inherently fair and central concept of equality of opportunity with a term that justifies group-based discrimination and denies the virtue of non-discrimination.  Playing cynical games with language like this is a perennial habit of progressives and other selfish special-interest groups.  In this case, equity is the logical consequence of the critical theory, systemic racism and social justice lies.
Ron Knecht is a Senior Policy Fellow at the Nevada Policy Research Institute.  He previously served Nevadans as State Controller, a higher education Regent, Senior Economist, college teacher and Legislator.  Contact him at RonKnecht@aol.com. 
Ron Knecht

775-882-2935
775-220-6128
 
www.RonKnecht.net
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Big Picture for Nevada Water Issues

5/11/2021

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​I recently penned a Nevada water white paper for Fred Simon, MD, running for Nevada Governor.  Here are highlights.
Colorado River annual flows are over-allocated among seven states, and reservoir storage in Lakes Powell and Mead is shrinking.  Hence, water allocations under the 1922 Colorado River Compact may be renegotiated or litigated in coming years.  Nevada needs to aggressively protect its interests in the Colorado River waters that supply 90 percent of Clark County’s needs.
More interstate water rights have been allocated by the “Law of the River” (rules, regulations and laws, including the Compact, governing the Colorado River) than there is real water on a reliable, continuous basis to satisfy them.  Fortunately, not all those water rights are currently in continuous use, especially in the Upper Colorado Basin, leaving some margin, which is rapidly diminishing with population growth and new development.
The Compact and a treaty with Mexico have allocated 16.5-million allocated acre-feet.  The problem is that tree-ring analyses suggest that the actual yearly flow over the last 1,200 years has been 14.6-million acre-feet.  And we’re currently in a long-term drought.
Fortunately, Lakes Mead and Powell reservoirs can hold a combined 56-million acre-feet.  But diversions and increased evaporation due to a Colorado River Basin drought since 2000 have reduced water levels in them to less than half their capacity.  And Upper Basin states, especially Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, are beginning to use more of their allocations.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) has asked the Legislature to outlaw water-guzzling ornamental grass that people almost never walk on (“non-functional turf” in road medians, housing developments and office parks).  This unprecedented measure would reduce annual water use by 15 percent, allowing for some growth while remaining below use limits dictated by the Law of the River or falling Lake Mead water levels.
These savings would buy time to develop new conservation measures, perhaps greater Colorado River allocations, and even restoration of Lake Mead water storage to historic levels.
Clark County’s bedroom communities have embraced conservation measures, including aggressive monitoring of sprinklers and leaky irrigation systems.  Since 2003, SNWA has prohibited developers from planting green front lawns in new subdivisions.  It also offers owners of existing properties very generous rebates up to $3 per square foot to tear out sod.
But 2020 was among our driest years in history, when Las Vegas suffered a record 240 days without measurable rainfall.  Although a ban on ornamental grass may draw resistance from master-planned communities, officials believe homebuyers from wetter regions now accept such limitations.
Clark County water-saving measures such as new conservation, plus greater river allocations and revived lake storage would greatly diminish the pressures to drain water from aquifers, streams and other surface waters to the north.  North-to-south water diversion would unnecessarily raise serious policy issues,0 extensive and expensive litigation and uncertainty.
That would cause unacceptable damage to rural county resources, business and communities.
Federal projections for Lakes Mead and Powell water levels show them dropping to historic low levels in coming months that may cause the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to declare an official shortage in 2022 for the first time.  Adverse developments could cause renewed pressure on northern water sources.  Such problems may also reduce the levels of very inexpensive hydropower available to Nevada, raising electric rates.
Compounding the problem for Northern Nevada, the state and the Sierra Mountains currently face “extreme or exceptional” drought conditions.
If Clark County renews past efforts to raid Northern Nevada water, the State government would become entangled in a bitter and protracted interregional battle because water rights in Nevada ultimately belong to the State and are appropriated to users based on the Prior Appropriation Doctrine.  Here too, the problem is that more water has been appropriated than actually exists.
However, here too, water usage is not continuous at full rights levels, and so the problems have been limited.  But increasing use in the North and new claims from the South could precipitate serious issues.
There are experiments on water rights going on in the North, but they are as yet unsettled.  And existing litigation in the North is expected to continue for at least half-a-dozen years.  Hence, north-to-south flow is not a practical option.
Ron Knecht, a Nevada Policy Research Institute Senior Policy Fellow, has served Nevadans as State Controller, a higher education Regent, economist, college teacher and legislator.  Contact him at RonKnecht@aol.com.
Ron Knecht

775-882-2935
775-220-6128
 
www.RonKnecht.net
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Mom Jensen Would Have Turned 100 Last Sunday

5/3/2021

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​I wrote the following remembrance two-and-a-half years ago.
Surrounded by her loving family, Christena Kathryn Jensen departed peacefully for Heaven Wednesday, October 24, 2018 at age 97.  Daughter Kathy Knecht, granddaughter Karyn Knecht and son-in-law Ron Knecht all loved her dearly and will miss her forever.
She was born May 2, 1921 in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn New York to wonderful parents Robert and Christena Hammond and had a younger sister Doris (who predeceased her).  When she was a girl, her father occasionally took her to Dodger games at Ebbets Field, which later made Ron envious.
Christena attended the College of William and Mary for a year before transferring to Skidmore College and obtaining her BA in 1943 as an English major.  She worked on Wall Street and then attended Columbia University’s School of Occupational Therapy, receiving a certificate in 1945.  From 1945 to 1953, she worked as an occupational therapist at four hospitals in the northeast.
In 1953, she and her friend Betty travelled to Europe, spending some months in Spain, which they enjoyed immensely.  Upon returning, Christena served three years as an occupational therapist at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Palo Alto California.
In 1958, she took an administrative job at Lockheed Missiles and Space Division in Palo Alto.  There she met LaVern C. Jensen, an engineer and later administrator at Lockheed.  Like Christena, Vern was one the nicest and most interesting people ever.  After a first dinner date, much boating and other dates, they were married in a small family ceremony November 28, 1959.
They had a great honeymoon road trip through many national parks in California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona, which only whetted their appetite for more travel.
In 1960, they drove from California to New York in her 1957 Chevy, the first of a few classic Chevies they owned.  They flew with Betty and her husband to London, where both couples had arranged to buy TR3s (red for the Jensens, white for the other couple) in which to tour Europe.
They visited the home sites of Jensen families in Norway and Sweden, and saw much of the continent during a rainy period.  They slept on a straw mattress in Venice and loved Italy.  Returning to London, they flew to New York and drove back across the continent in the Chevy because their TR3 would not arrive for some weeks.
With a new home and more boating, they were very happy.  And happier still when their only daughter Kathy arrived in 1961.  They lived for a while with Vern’s parents as they fixed up their home, but kept traveling.
Kathy stayed with her grandparents while they visited the 1965 New York World’s Fair and New England.  And in 1969, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.  The three moved to Los Altos in the 1970s, and stayed there through the 1990s.
In 1975 they went to Mexico and in 1976 returned for an extensive tour of Europe, both times taking Kathy.  The next year they made a road trip to Lily, South Dakota – now a ghost town – to show Kathy where her father’s family lived before fleeing the Dust Bowl and Great Depression with only their suitcases.
In 1979, it was the Hawaiian Islands.  Then road trips in 1983 to San Simeon and Hearst Castle and in 1985 to Texas.  Also, in 1985 they returned to England and Scotland and visited the Hammond home sites.  In 1986, it was Florida to visit relatives.  Later trips to Spain, Morocco, the Amazon and China didn’t include Kathy, who stayed home to work and take care of the pets.
Surrounded by Christena, Kathy and Ron (then engaged to Kathy), Vern died in 1997 from mesothelioma caused by his work in World War II in the Marin ship yards.
After the birth of granddaughter Karyn in 2001, the family moved to Carson City.  Ron has always said the three-generation household is ideal.  Christena was a great mentor to Kathy and said her life was greatly enriched watching Karyn grow up.
To Kathy, like Christena in many ways, she was the ideal mom.  To Karyn, the perfect grandmom.  And to Ron, the best mother-in-law ever.
Ron Knecht is a Senior Policy Fellow at the Nevada Policy Research Institute.  Contact him at RonKnecht@aol.com. 
Ron Knecht

775-882-2935
775-220-6128
 
www.RonKnecht.net
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Full Disclosure: I’m Proudly Associated with NPRI

4/27/2021

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​This is full disclosure for my readers, but really a celebration of one of the best things about Nevada and my good fortune to become a part of it.  Recently, John Tsarpalas, President of the Nevada Policy Research Institute asked me to join that public interest group in some capacity.
More than honored, I was thrilled.  We discussed it briefly, and I became Senior Policy Advisor at NPRI.  Let’s start with their mission statement:
“Nevada Policy’s mission is to effectively promote policies that encourage free-market solutions, protect individual liberties, and eliminate unnecessary governmental restrictions on the citizens and businesses of Nevada.
“In order to accomplish this mission, we:
·       Use fact-based information to create policy and to educate the public.
·       Analyze legislation, regulation, and litigation to inform citizens of Nevada about intended and unintended consequences.
·       Leverage social and public media to inform current and future citizens of Nevada.
·       Collaborate with other like-minded organizations to leverage freedom-promoting policies and laws.
·       Advocate for policies that unleash the creative power of free markets and free people.
·       Concentrate our work on areas that have profound impact on the freedoms of Nevadans: state budgetary concerns, school choice, taxation, criminal justice reform and transparency in government.”
These are almost all of what has motivated my involvement in public affairs the last 20 years since coming to the Silver State.  And before, during my last dozen years in the Golden State.  We’re a perfect match.
Equally good matches are the other people of NPRI.  Besides Tsarpalas, Chairman Ransom W. Webster and the board, these include Robert Fellner, Daniel Honchariw, Michael Schaus, Kelly Smith, Megan Heryet and Keith Beauvais.
Among the many outstanding alumni of NPRI is Geoffrey Lawrence, who I recruited when I was elected state controller in 2014 to become Assistant State Controller.  As I knew he would, Geoff did an outstanding job.  So, to spite us both, Governor Brian Sandoval cut his position from our budget.  Of course, Geoff has gone on to do many other outstanding things since then.
In 1990 Judy Cresenta, traveled to the Soviet Union to train pro-democracy leaders in the principles of free markets and free elections.  Upon returning the next year, she realized there was a widespread need for such education in the United States and she founded NPRI.
NPRI has produced innovative policy solutions in many areas: Nevada’s Public Employee Retirement System; the effect of the so-called Affordable Care Act on Nevada’s Medicaid spending; revenue-neutral tax reform; an alternative state budget; collective bargaining reforms; federal ownership of Nevada lands; sound energy policy; and school reforms, including the most expansive school choice program in the nation.
As controller, my annual reports and other publications addressed many of these subjects, sometimes relying expressly on NPRI’s work.
Since 2013, NPRI has issued a biennial publication for lawmakers titled Solutions.  Recent versions address over 50 subjects.  Legislators and staff regularly reach out to NPRI for advice and analysis, and the Institute’s analysts frequently testify before legislative committees.
News media frequently turn to NPRI for comment on breaking news and for their research, information campaigns and litigation efforts. NPRI receives coverage regularly in major Nevada media outlets and numerous national outlets, including the Wall Street Journal.
Expanding government transparency is a major NPRI focus, and so it has published government employee compensation and retirement information since 2008 on TransparentNevada.com.  Its affiliate TransparentCalifornia.com has earned more than 250-million page views and is ranked in the top 0.001 percent among the most heavily trafficked websites nationwide.
That’s just a partial account of its good works.
Many readers know that I have been greatly slowed the last year by three major surgeries (one really major) and a number of minor ailments.  But all that seems to be receding into the rear-view mirror now.  Hence, I look forward to being able to contribute regularly and substantially to NPRI.
I highly recommend that you contribute to this outstanding non-profit organization.  Kathy, Karyn and I have done so for years, and my work will be free to them.  To do so, go to npri.org.
Their budget of less than $1-million annually is funded 89 percent by contributions and grants, with two-thirds spent on salaries, other compensation and employee benefits.
Ron Knecht has served Nevadans as state controller, a higher education regent, economist, college teacher and legislator.  Contact him at RonKnecht@aol.com.  

Ron Knecht

775-882-2935
775-220-6128
 
www.RonKnecht.net
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Earth Day + 51 Years: We’re Still Here & Having Fun

4/20/2021

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​At the Sundance Film Festival in January 2006 premier of his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” Al Gore warned, “Unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next ten years, the world will reach a point of no return.”  He said we were in “a true climate emergency.”
But Earth hasn’t warmed in 20 years.  Supposedly, 2015 smashed the previous temperature record, but actually it was only the third hottest year on record and maybe not close to the hottest.  Nor have there been more or more extreme weather events.  Nor has sea level risen 20 feet.  No ecological collapse.  There’s still lots of snow on Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro and polar bears are plentiful.  All defying the alarmists’ predictions.
Still, Gore’s habit of making silly predictions about anthropogenic (man-caused) climate warming puts him in good company with many climate alarmists.
As climate scientist H. Sterling Burnett explains, “The big lie (about impending climate catastrophes) is built on a faulty premise that science can realistically trace the cause of modest recent warming of the earth primarily to human greenhouse gas emissions, and that from this we can confidently predict what the world will look like 50, 100, and 300 years from now.”
As award-winning climate scientist Richard Lindzen said, people “can’t believe that something so absurd could gain such universal acceptance.”
Perhaps the most famous ridiculous claim – fraud, actually – came in 2001 when the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sought to replace settled climate history with the “hockey stick” graph.  That graph denied the long-recognized medieval warm period of 950AD to 1250AD and the little ice age of 1350AD to 1850AD, claiming that for 2000 years the average earth temperature graph had been essentially flat like the hockey stick handle.
The 20th Century, however, had seen a rapid rise in temperature, due to an increase in carbon emissions.  Like the hockey stick blade.  Ultimately, the hockey-stick thesis was so completely debunked by good scientists with sound data that the IPCC had to abandon it.
The academics who conjured up the hockey stick were found to have knowingly falsified the data in Climategate.  A treasure trove of inconvenient emails was hacked and leaked, showing their efforts to “hide” key facts and conspiracy to damage scientists who debunked their model.
Next, the Surface Station Project exposed the fact that 20th Century temperature readings from the vast majority of ground-based stations were artificially inflated by the urban heat island effect and from unjustified adjustments.  The readings from sea-based measurements were artificially adjusted upwards by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
According to the book, “Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate”, by world-renowned astrophysicist and climate expert S. Fred Singer and others, further findings by reputable climate scientists include that carbon-dioxide (CO2) has not caused temperatures or sea levels to rise beyond historical rates.  Also, global climate change has not harmed coral reefs.  And CO2 concentration increases across long time spans have followed rising global temperatures by 600 to 800 years, not preceded them as alarmists claim.
The book “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters” is to be published next month by Steven Koonin, who was chief scientist at the Obama Energy Department.  It shows that the problem is not only much weak science but especially the bastardization of all the science by the political and media classes, including the IPCC.
A Wall Street Journal reviewer writes, “You will come to doubt the usefulness of century-long forecasts claiming to know how 1% shifts in variables will affect a global climate that we don’t understand with anything resembling 1% precision.”
Koonin, Burnett and other reputable climate scientists recognize the limits to the computer models on which alarmists base many scares.  They (and I) also agree there has been slight warming since 1900 and there will be similar further warming this century from CO2 increases already baked into our atmosphere, but no runaway effects.
And wholesale abandonment of fossil fuels isn’t justified, but renewed reliance on nuclear power is.  Also, the warming so far has made the Earth greener.
So, don’t worry; enjoy Earth Day for many years to come.
Ron Knecht has served Nevadans as state controller, a higher education regent, economist, college teacher and legislator.  Contact him at RonKnecht@aol.com.  
Ron Knecht

775-882-2935
775-220-6128
 
www.RonKnecht.net
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Separating Facts and lies in Daunte Wright’s Death

4/14/2021

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​
​Daunte Wright, 20, the Black father of a two-year old boy, was shot and killed in a police traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, MN Sunday.  Kimberly Potter, 48, the White officer who shot him and a 26-year veteran of the local police force, said the shooting was an accident, and she has resigned from the force.
After the stop for an expired license plate, officers learned Wright had outstanding warrants, including carrying a pistol without a permit, and they started to take him into custody.  Police body-camera videos of the stop show Wright physically resisted arrest and sought to escape.  Potter drew an arm from her side and at least four times threatened to tase him.
When she shot, it was her side arm, not taser, in her hand and she appeared shocked at the mistake.  He died at the scene.
Wright’s mother said her son was an “amazing loving kid” with “a big heart.”  She added, “He just had his whole life taken away from him.  We just had our hearts pulled out of our chests. He was my baby.”
Wright’s relatives said he was a good-natured father who worked multiple jobs to support his son.  “My brother lost his life because they were trigger-happy,” claimed Dallas Wright, his older half-brother.
“I have loved every minute of being a police officer and serving this community to the best of my ability, but I believe it is in the best interest of the community, the department, and my fellow officers if I resign immediately,” said Potter in her resignation letter.  Local officials have charged her with second degree manslaughter.
Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliot, also Black, said Monday Potter should lose her job and said Tuesday the city was working through the process of firing her.  He also said on national television he believes officers should not be armed when making traffic stops.
Data and videos have shown that traffic stops and other police actions, can be very dangerous, leading to deaths of officers as often or more than to the deaths of Black civilians by White cops.
Police Chief Tim Gannon said he thought the shooting was an accident, but the video should determine whether Potter should be returned to the force.  He also resigned.  The City Manager was fired for saying Potter should receive due process, which is guaranteed by the United States Constitution.
Mother Wright’s grief is something legitimate with which we completely sympathize.  By all accounts, she has confined her comments to a mother’s grief and has not made accusatory statements. Dallas Wright’s statement includes an unfounded accusation, forgivable in context.
On national television, the mayor said, “In this country, if you’re black and you get pulled over by the police, you have a very much higher chance of being dead just because you’re black, and just because you’re encountering police."  He added, "We've seen this far too many times where a young black man or woman is pulled over by police or encounters police and they end up dead. People protesting are asking when will this stop."
The first statement makes him a hate-filled lying racist and unfit to be mayor.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota said it had "deep concerns that police here appear to have used dangling air fresheners as an excuse for making a pretextual stop, something police do all too often to target Black people.  …  While we are waiting to learn more, we must reiterate that police violence and killings of people of color must end, as must the over-policing and racial profiling that are endemic to our white supremacist system of policing."
This is the typical ACLU’s hate-driven racist pack of lies and disregard for the facts.  It was reported by MSNBC, which took great pains to avoid reporting the weapons arrest by calling it a “gross misdemeanor warrant.”  All major mainstream media outlets, except FOX and the Epoch Times, went to similar lengths to make their stories sympathetic to Wright’s actions and accusatory of racism.
They and the Antifa, Black Lives Matter and other rioters, looters and vandals in the streets of various cities this week, and all their apologists are similarly racist hate-filled liars.
Ron Knecht has served Nevadans as state controller, a higher education regent, economist, college teacher and legislator.  Contact him at RonKnecht@aol.com. 
Ron Knecht

775-882-2935
775-220-6128
 
www.RonKnecht.net
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