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Full Disclosure: I’m Proudly Associated with NPRI

4/27/2021

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 [email protected].

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 [email protected].
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 [email protected].
Ron Knecht

775-882-2935
775-220-6128

www.RonKnecht.net

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MLB and Other Corporate Bullying and Hypocrisy

4/6/2021

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Readers of this column know I’m a big baseball fan, especially of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Baltimore Orioles. So, Major League Baseball’s “woke” cancel-culture decision to move this year’s All-star game from Atlanta to Denver due to an election reform measure Georgia passed presents a real conundrum.
Especially because the first person to raise the issue was Dodger manager Dave Roberts.
Georgia, which had a number of problems with its two most recent elections, took sensible actions to ensure future elections do not suffer the same problems and are completed, including vote counting, quickly and fairly. The state wanted to assure that all legitimate votes are counted and no illegitimate ones are.
But progressives and other leftists falsely attacked the Georgia measures by mischaracterizing the statute’s terms and purposes. MLB and some other corporate bullies promptly caved in to the cry-baby destructive radicals. Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred first announced the All-star game, planned for Atlanta for a couple of years, would be moved, costing Georgia and Atlanta tens of millions of dollars.
“In other words, Georgia is being punished financially for vote-suppressing acts it didn’t take,” wrote award-winning author Wesley J. Smith, who is also chairman of the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. “In other words, … Manfred took this punitive action based on lies, not only in the media, but most blatantly by – and at the urging of – the president of the United States.”
“Specifically, ‘President Unity’ sank into the caustic quicksand of demagoguery by claiming the new law is worse than Jim Crow,” which is simply ludicrous.
The Washington Post’s leftist fact-checker Glenn Kessler gave Biden’s critique of the Georgia reforms “Four Pinocchios,” his lowest rating.
Let’s review some opponents’ claims and the facts.
First, the allegation the new law discourages voting and suppresses votes. In fact, it actually preserves or expands ballot access in several important ways, such as requiring large precincts with hour or longer wait times to add voting machines and personnel in subsequent elections. It also increases mandatory days of early weekend voting. Etc.
Second, the claim it eliminates voting on Sunday to suppress African American votes. In 2020, only 16 of 159 counties offered early voting on Sundays. The reform provides the option for early voting on two Sundays for all areas.
Third claim: The bill eliminates drop boxes for absentee voting. The reforms make drop boxes an official part of Georgia elections; they were unknown before 2020. So, they will be an official part of elections in all 159 counties and supervised to prevent tampering.
Biden also lied by numerous times claiming the standard provision in Georgia’s law and common to all others that prevents politicking of voters standing in line would prevent voters from getting food and water. The new law specifically allows for poll workers to provide.
There are more details, but the upshot is the reform law improves access for voters and fairness. Manfred and MLB leadership ignored the facts and charged ahead with their virtue signaling. Ironically, they did so right after cutting a deal with communist China to set up a baseball league there, as well as to live-stream MLB games to the country.
The same China that’s committing genocide against the Uighurs in its western provinces. The one that harvests organs from living Falun Gang practitioners who are prisoners of conscience. The one that has crushed democracy in Hong Kong and may soon do worse.
Not a peep from Manfred and baseball owners about these awful, continuing and growing abuses. They saw what happened when a basketball coach criticized China.
What to do? First, you can be absolutely sure I won’t watch the All-star game or read about it. I’ve already cast the National Basketball League and National Football League into the outer darkness (completely ignore them and their products) for their craven fealty to wokeness and cancel culture.
And I’m beginning to boycott other Big Business, Big Tech and Big Entertainment that reject and insult America, as are many individuals and groups. (Go to hell, Twitter!)
I would find it hard to completely ostracize the Dodgers for Dave Roberts’ monstrous mistake. But he needs to go. The Dodgers should get someone else.
Ron Knecht has served Nevadans as state controller, a higher education regent, economist, college teacher and legislator. Contact him at [email protected].
Ron Knecht

775-882-2935
775-220-6128

www.RonKnecht.net

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Full Disclosure: I’m Proudly Associated with NPRI

Earth Day + 51 Years: We’re Still Here & Having Fun

Separating Facts and lies in Daunte Wright’s Death

MLB and Other Corporate Bullying and Hypocrisy

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