Vol. 36 No. 2, email version
Get Ready!
The Nevada Legislature Starts February 2, 2009
Make sure we have your current email address and that you forward our alerts to others.
The biggest issue facing us will be the Legislature’s determination to raise taxes. In addition, below are listed just a few of the 963 Bill Draft Requests (BDR’s) that have been requested so far at the Nevada Legislature. We can expect there will be a total of about 1,500 bills introduced. With a Democrat majority in both houses we will have a real challenge.
We really need your support in contacting the Legislators and in sharing our E-mail alerts with others. We must multiply our efforts. The list was compiled by State Vice-Chairman Lynn Chapman.
You can access all of the BDR’s (which are just one line descriptions) and the completed bills by going to www.leg.state.nv.us and choosing on the left, the “Session Info” option and the “2009 Session”.
Find out who your state Senator and Assemblyman are by choosing on the right, the “Whose my Legislator?” option.
BDR 20: Makes failure to wear a safety belt a primary offense. This means the police can stop you for any reason at anytime…just to check if you’re wearing a seatbelt. We opposed this during the 2007 session and it did not pass.
BDR 41 Restricts use of state money to pay lobbyists. This really needs to be done. Every conceivable state government department, county, city, school district ad nauseam has its own team of paid lobbyists…paid by you, the taxpayer.
BDR 43 Removes the current presidential caucus system and restores the presidential preference primary.
BDR 67 and other BDR’s Annual Legislative Sessions. Well, we all know as Mark Twain stated, “No one is safe when the Legislature is in session.” We have long successfully opposed annual sessions.
BDR 138 Makes various changes concerning firearms.
BDR 149 Authorizes a statewide lottery. We opposed this in 2007 and it did not pass, but this session will be different with Democratic majorities in both Senate and Assembly.
BDR 386 Prohibits the Governor or any other state officer or employee from binding the State to the requirements of an international trade agreement without authorization by the Legislature. This is a great bill, which we supported last session. We worked with the union democrat Assemblywoman Peggy Pierce and helped to get one of her related bills passed. Phyllis Schlafly has worked very hard opposing international trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT, which have shipped our jobs overseas.
SB 52 (Senate Bill) Revises provisions relating to drivers' licenses and identification cards to facilitate implementation of the federal Real ID Act of 2005. We opposed REAL ID, which is nothing but a national ID card. Unfortunately, our legislature opposed Real ID only because the feds didn’t give the state enough money to implement it. It’s still an ominous problem.
BDR 463 Requires paper ballots in elections and a system for auditing the ballots. We really need this!
BDR 481 Prohibits unauthorized reading, recording and sharing of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) information. Good!
BDR 597 Revises the provisions governing emergency management plans to include evacuation and sheltering of the civilian population. We don’t know what any of the BDR’s will specifically contain, but this has possible shades of the horrendous Model Emergency Health Powers Act, which we successfully opposed. We don’t know what kind of emergency plans they have for us… like quarantining you separately from your family, forced vaccines and medication, confiscation of vehicles, guns, food, clothing, etc. We will be watching!
BDR 660 Requires mental health consortiums to develop long-range strategic plans for the provision of mental health services to children. We watch all mental health bills for children, which could require mandatory psychological testing and medication.
BDR 665 Proposes to amend the Nevada Constitution to remove term limits for certain public officers. Term limits go into effect in 2010, so this will remove them.
BDR 678 Proposes to amend the Nevada Constitution to revise the procedure for reapportioning election districts. Critical because reapportionment takes place after the 2010 census!
BDR 698 Requires biometric identifiers from applicants for drivers' licenses and identification cards. In other words, you will have to have fingerprints, retinal scans or other biometric identifiers attached to your drivers license. The Brave New World is upon us.
BDR 700 More campaign finance reporting, which helps incumbents and hurts challengers.
BDR 710 Proposes to amend the Nevada Constitution to revise the provisions governing a petition for an initiative or referendum. After all the new restrictions on petitioning the Legislature has passed, no petition made it on the ballot in 2008. That’s what the Legislature wants…no petitions on the ballot!
BDR 793 Ratifies the “so called” Equal Rights Amendment. See the enclosed letter to the Legislature. ERA will overturn Nevada’s Protection of Marriage, make states legislative zeros, create a constitutional right to abortion, and eliminate Social Security benefits for wives and mothers.
BDR 822 Enacts the Agreement among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote. This eliminates the Electoral College. Eagle Forum has long supported the Electoral College. A popular vote would make Nevada’s votes meaningless.
BDR 827 Extends provisions relating to certain physical examinations given to children in schools. Who knows what this means!
BDR 883 Proposes to amend the Nevada Constitution to require a certain amount of support for any initiative petition, which would provide for increased public revenue if approved. This is incredible! Any initiative petition that would provide more money for the government will get preferential help, but anything that will limit government revenues would have no help.
BDR 924 Requires the fluoridation of public water systems serving Washoe County. We beat this for many years, but they never give up!
BDR 936 Makes the English language the official language of the State of Nevada. Hooray!
Nevada Families Eagle Forum Newsletter is published 12 times a year. The Subscription price is $25.00.
January 16, 2009 “In the Year of our Lord”
Dear Legislator,
Welcome to the Legislature as the people’s representative! Thank you for your willingness to represent and serve the people of Nevada.
The ERA has been introduced in the Nevada Legislature as BDR 793. I am the former State Chairman of STOP ERA, so I wanted to give you some background on the issue.
Thirty-six years ago, the “so called” Equal Rights Amendment, a proposed Federal Constitutional Amendment passed the U.S. Congress with a seven-year time limit. When they failed to get the required 38 states to ratify ERA, Congress passed an unprecedented 2-year extension. Even with the time extension they failed to gain any additional states, and in fact five states rescinded their original ratifications.
In 1978, ERA was on the Nevada ballot and the people defeated it by a 68% vote, the largest percentage against ERA anywhere in the nation.
Now, thirty years later the ERA has surfaced again. The proponents are pretending there was no time limit on the original ERA. We all believe in equal pay for equal work, which is already the law. But, the reality of ERA goes far beyond that, and will open a can of worms of contentious and controversial issues, whipping up heated public debate.
ERA will insure that there can be no recognition in law that men and women are different. That means:
1) Section 2 of ERA would transfer enormous areas of law from state legislatures to the Federal Government including marriage, divorce, family property laws, adoptions, abortions, alimony, some criminal laws, public and private schools, prison regulations and insurance rates. Senator Sam J. Ervin Jr., a recognized constitutional authority, said: “If this Equal Rights Amendment is adopted, it will virtually reduce the States of this Nation to meaningless zeroes on the Nation’s map.”
2) ERA will overturn our Protection of Marriage Amendment, which passed with a 70% favorable vote. It will also overturn DOMA, the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which protects individual states. This is because these laws use gender specific language such as “man” and “woman”.
3) Federally, it will nullify the homemaker’s Social Security benefit based on a husband’s earnings. Although most women are working now, this will deny Social Security benefits to our mothers and grandmothers further impoverishing them. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg makes it clear in her book that ERA would eliminate the Social Security benefits of wives, widows, mothers and grandmothers. See the enclosed flier. More information is available about the consequences of ERA at www.stopera.com
With the financial crisis facing our state, now is not the time to fight a huge battle over something that died thirty years ago.
Sincerely,
Janine Hansen, State President
P.S. See enclosed brochure or go to www.stopera.com on how ERA will deny Social Security benefits to wives, mothers and grandmothers.
Stimulus for Who?
This week the House is expected to pass an $825 billion economic stimulus package. In reality, this bill is just an escalation of a government-created economic mess. As before, a sense of urgency and impending doom is being used to extract mountains of money from Congress with minimal debate. So much for change. This is déjà vu. We are again being promised that its passage will help employment, help homeowners, help the environment, etc. These promises are worthless. This time around especially, Congress should know better than to pass anything of this magnitude without first reading the fine print. There a many red flags that I have found in this bill.
At least $4 billion is allocated to expanding the police state and the war on drugs through Byrne grants, which even the Bush administration opposed, and the COPS program, both of which are corrupt and largely ineffective programs.
To help Big Brother keep a better eye on us and our children, $20 billion would go towards health information technology, which would create a national system of electronic medical records without adequate privacy protection. These records would instead be subject to the misnamed federal “medical privacy” rule, which allows government and state-favored special interests to see medical records at will. An additional $250 million is allocated for states to nationalize individual student data, expanding Federal control of education and eroding privacy.
$79 billion bails out states that haphazardly expanded their budgets during the bubble years, but refuse to retrench and cut back, as their taxpayers have had to, during recession years.
$200 million expands Americorps. $100 million goes to “faith-and-community” based organizations for social services, which will further insinuate the government into charity and community service. Private charities are much more efficient and effective because they are directly accountable to donors, while public programs tend to get rewarded for failure. With its money, the Federal Government brings its incompetence and its whims, while creating foolish dependence. This is sad to see.
Of course the bill is rife with central planning projects. $4 billion for job training, much of which will be used to direct workers into “green jobs”. $200 million to “encourage” electric cars, $2 billion to support US manufacturers of advanced batteries and battery systems, which is yet another function of government I can’t find in the Constitution. Not to mention $500 million for energy efficient manufacturing demonstration projects, $70 million for a Technology Innovation Program for “research in potentially revolutionary technologies” in which government, not supply and demand, will pick winners and losers. $746 million for afterschool snacks, $6.75 billion for the Department of Commerce, including $1 billion for a census.
This bill delivers an additional debt burden of $6,700 to every American man, woman and child.
There is a lot of stimulus and growth in this bill – that is, of government. Nothing in this bill stimulates the freedom and prosperity of the American people. Politician-directed spending is never as successful as market-driven investment. Instead of passing this bill, Congress should get out of the way by cutting taxes, cutting spending, and reining in the reckless monetary policy of the Federal Reserve.
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