Your salary is only a fraction of the cost of your employment. Employers must factor in payroll taxes, health-care benefits, and days of vacation and sick leave to calculate your total cost to their budget. On top of this, any other regulation the government imposes upon the company factors not only into your employer’s bottom line, but into yours as well.

From 1961-2005, federal and state education spending per pupil grew 247 percent after adjusting for inflation. That is massive growth.

As last week's blog entry (It's the spending, stupid) demonstrated, Nevada's budget crisis was self-inflicted ... too much spending and not enough self control.  But what if Nevada had shown restraint over the last decade? Would we be better off or would the reduction in spending have made the state incapable of providing basic services for a rapidly growing population?

The housing market crash and drop in tourism have left Nevada short on cash and unable to pay for promised services. Nevada's projected budget shortfall of more than $1 billion has many on the Left screaming for more taxes.  If taxes are not raised, they argue, the $1.2 billion shortfall will be devastating to "essential" state services.  However, let's not be quick to blame the economy for Nevada's current situation.

Erin Neff, in her July 10 column for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, urges the Nevada Supreme Court to throw out the voter-approved constitutional amendment imposing term limits on elected officials. After first indulging herself in a long, aimless and pointless rant – is there really a need to call Richard Ziser a homophobe in a column on term limits? – she finally gets to the crux of her argument.

Barack Obama, the Democrats' presumptive nominee for president, has spent his public career accumulating a consistent record of hostility toward gun rights. He's done this through his financial support for anti-gun groups, his voting record and his rhetoric. Of the recently overturned Washington, D.C., handgun ban, Obama had said last November that he believed the ban to be constitutional.

Proponents of gun rights claimed victory this week as the United States Supreme Court, in the latest of several 5-4 decisions, struck down Washington, D.C.'s ban on handguns. While the news is certainly welcome, the razor-thin margin by which this case was decided ought to be unsettling for those who believe in fidelity to the Constitution. This one was closer than it should have been.

A friend and NPRI supporter has called to our attention some recent comments by John Coleman, who founded The Weather Channel and is now with KUSI-TV in San Diego. Coleman has some harsh words for Al Gore and his brethren in the environmentalist movement, and makes the case (and a compelling one, at that) that there is a direct link between overblown global warming alarmism and skyrocketing gas prices.

Jon Ralston's blog post from June 11 contains a link to a letter written by Steve Martin of Nevadans for Fair Taxes, in which Martin takes the publicly funded Nevada Association of Counties (NACO) to task for using taxpayer dollars, at the behest of special interests (i.e. gaming and the teacher union) to lobby county governments to push for massive tax increases.

A Las Vegas Sun editorial published last weekend caught my eye for its sub-headline, which is dead-on accurate: "State government wrestling a budget crisis largely of its own making". Then I read the editorial.