There are flaws in news coverage. By its very nature, conflict is news and normality is not. We don’t report the banks that have not been robbed each day.
Dennis Myers
During the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, corruption in government and industry was so common and blatant that it generated widespread revulsion in the public. It led to the Progressive Era, when remedies were adopted that turned out to be less than successful, such as initiative, referendum and recall.
“In May of 1874 I removed to Virginia City, Nevada, where the sewage of the city ran in an open flume under the sidewalk, and many times the odor was so unpleasant that people had to take the middle of the street,” wrote John Manson in the American Journal of Clinical Medicine in March 1910. “The consequence was that we had diphtheria all the time.”
Ed Vogel of the Las Vegas Review-Journal made the case last week for a new Nevada state song. For those who don’t know it (population in Nevada turns over so rapidly it’s easy for longtime residents to take for granted the familiarity of State Things), the song is “Home Means Nevada” and it has been the Nevada anthem for 81 years.
U.S. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada has been engaged in a rhetorical battle with the Koch brothers, billionaire conservatives who lay out huge amounts of money for political committees that campaign against Democrats.
Afew days ago the Reno Gazette-Journal, which has been running front- page historical items about Nevada during this 149th year of statehood, published an item reporting that “Ronald Reagan’s rally for Republican candidates for state office at the University of Nevada, Reno quad on Oct. 7, 1982, was the first visit to campus by a sitting U.S. president.”
In 2002 I was riding by train across the United States from Pennsylvania to Nevada. During one meal in the dining car, I was seated with three other folks. One businessperson was complaining about the subsidies the railroads receive from the government, even as he enjoyed their benefits.
Last week, Bob Halstead, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, spoke before the Nye County Commission. He briefed the commissioners on funding deficits and other problems facing the federal efforts to build a dump for high-level nuclear wastes. In the course of his presentation, Halstead reported on some of the misinformation that is floating around about Yucca Mountain in Nye County, previously the all-but-certain site for the dump.
On Feb. 6, U.S. Rep. Donna Edwards spoke at an annual dinner of the Washington Press Club Foundation. The speech, intended to be humorous, fell flat, or so some journalists say. That kind of performance normally gets a line or two in the article about these occasions.
When the news of Shirley Temple’s death came through last week, my mind went first to one of the least-remembered episodes of her career. In 1967, she ran for the U.S. House.
In December 1935, the Colorado River Commission reported to Nevada Gov. Richard Kirman that if the state built transmission lines to supply power to western and northern Nevada, the cost of electricity to consumers would be reduced.
When Sue Wagner was born in Maine in 1940, the now-disdained term “New England liberal” did not exist. In fact, it would have been considered a contradiction in terms. Her native state was known for being rock-ribbed Republican and for being a bellwether, fostering a seldom used saying — “As goes Maine, so goes the nation.”
Last weekend, two rather interesting stories appeared on Page 1 of an edition of The New York Times.
In 1962 at President John F. Kennedy’s direction, U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry assembled 10 leading scientists to review the existing science on smoking.
When 2013 began, just eight states barred employers from prying into the credit records of their workers. That is no longer the case. Although I don’t yet have a full list of those who have joined this elite group, it is growing steadily, and in states where there is no prohibition, local governments are also enacting ordinances. In Congress, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has introduced legislation to put an end to the practice nationally.
