Vin Suprynowicz

The Nevada Democratic Party and its affiliated unions did a great job turning out voters for the Nov. 4 general election, and placing in the hands of many of those voters endorsement sheets “recommending” how they might vote — all the way down the ballot to the supposedly “non-partisan” elections for judgeships, school board, etc.

Some went further. These days, our county registrars will send out an “absentee ballot” to anyone who requests one, facilitating the completion of such ballots under the supervision of anyone (bosses, union stewards) willing to pressure voters into showing up with their ballots at some appointed time and place, far from the privacy curtains of their neighborhood polling station.

More »

It’s been a week and a half since Barack Obama was elected president. He won’t take office for another two months. But he’s already got one big group of Americans on their feet.

What is Barack Obama’s position on the rights to bear arms?

More »

It’s hard to write about politics of any kind in a “straddler” column — one keyboarded in early October to appear on most newsstands the week AFTER a national election.

As I write this, the autumn 2008 global stock and financial swoop is well underway. The problem was caused, first, by reckless expansion of credit and the currency supply, encouraging the final “bubble” which caps every boom-bust business cycle under an inflationary, fiat-currency system tied to the accompanying legalized fraud known as “fractional reserve” banking. (Read Ludwig Von Mises or — far easier to digest — Murray Rothbard.)

More »

Once begun, it was clear the “bailout train” would keep running through Washington, with one industry after another demanding, “You helped the banks, now it’s OUR turn.”

Thursday Nov. 6 it was Detroit’s automakers, battered by the economic crisis and appealing to congressional leaders for an additional $25 billion in federal loans to make required payments to employee health care trust funds incurred as part of a 2007 labor deal. The car makers also want lawmakers’ help in winning access to the $700 billion financial bailout being run by the Treasury Department and to low-rate emergency borrowing from the Federal Reserve’s discount window, normally available only to banks.

More »

(Concluding my column of yesterday, Nov. 8.)

One particularly brilliant legal mind writes in, in response to a recent column:

“List of lies in this column: … Illegal immigrants are barred from receiving federal welfare benefits, and even legal immigrants cannot receive those benefits for the first five years after they immigrate. See title IV of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 and subsequent amendments.”

More »

Channel-hopping on election night, you couldn’t help but notice the similar expressions on the faces of so many of the anchors, or correspondents, or whatever the networks now call their professional spokesmodelreaderpersons. From Katie Couric to Diane Sawyer, they were all beaming like cats who had just swallowed the canary.

No, that’s not quite right. To be accurate, that glow, that inability to conceal a blush and a smile, reminded me of the look of a young newlywed joyfully informing her friends that the new hubby has got her in a family way.

More »

In Tuesday’s presidential election, I know who I “should” vote for.

I disagree with the Libertarian Party platform’s endorsement of the current congressional abdication of responsibility to control immigration. (Don’t we have the same right to control access to our welfare programs as we have to block some stranger from breaking down our door and sleeping on our couch?)  I further disagree with this year’s choice of standard-bearer Bob Barr — who has violated the Libertarian platform (both the real one and the current, “airbrushed” version) by putting people in prison for exercising their Constitutional right to traffic in “controlled” plant extracts and subsequently done nothing to get them out.

More »

Nevada Democrats are continuing to wage an unsavory “hit piece” campaign against Nevada state Senators Bob Beers and Joe Heck. The race is subject of a lede editorial in Friday’s Review-Journal.

But here’s “the rest of the story.”

More »

Editor’s note: USMC Col. Mitchell Paige (ret.) died Nov. 15, 2003, in La Quinta, Calif. This annual column is dedicated to his memory, and to the men who fought beside him.

It’s Oct. 26.

More »

You’re a doctor. You need to bring in $3,000 apiece for your most common procedure. But Medicare and Medicaid — which pay for about half your patients — have just told you they’re only going to pay you one-third of what they’re billed. What do you do? You don’t need to be a CPA to know the answer is to start billing everyone $4,500 for your procedure. The half of your patients who pay full price thus pay $1,500 extra, covering the $1,500 shortfall for each Medicare/Medicaid-covered procedure.

Now the tricky question: If someone who’s NOT on Medicaid or Medicare visits your medical office to have this procedure done, and promptly pays his or her $4,500 in full, how much has he or she paid you, this year?

More »