News
Episode 68: What Policy Solutions Should We be Focused On in the Year Ahead?
Free to Offend Episode 68 | Guest: Geoff Lawrence, Director of Research, Nevada Policy At first glance, it seems like divided government should make it harder to get meaningful reforms passed into law … but the truth is, there are still plenty of opportunities. Geoffrey Lawrence, director of research for… Read More
Recent News
Web of Deception: Environmental Miseducation
The schoolchildren of Nevada and the United States are familiar with a concept known as the "web of life." Marketing this philosophy is a web of another sort. The Sierra Club, Audobon Society, National Wildlife Federation and Nature Conservancy—in conjunction with the EPA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, BLM, National Park Service, Eastern foundations and the education establishment—provide questionable information to the nation’s school systems and call it "environmental education."
The Fallout over Fallout
In the 1950s, almost 100 nuclear bombs were set off in Southern Nevada. It is now known that residents, livestock and military personnel in the immediate vicinity of the blasts suffered adverse health effects. But for many years, activists have claimed that nuclear fallout from atomic testing made thousands of additional Americans sick—people who did not live or work close to the Nevada Test Site (NTS). This claim received a bit more credibility last year, when a federal health institute concluded that as many as 75,000 children developed thyroid cancer due to nuclear fallout. While there is no doubt that Americans were exposed to radioactive material from explosions at the NTS, the public health consequences of the blasts remain murky. Earlier this month, two federal science panels concluded that there is little evidence to indicate widespread thyroid cancers from nuclear testing, and thus a national screening program for the disease is not needed.
1998 Washoe County School Bond
"Would that I could discover truth as easily as I can uncover falsehood."Although attributed to Cicero, the above quote could as easily be applied to citizens of Washoe County and Incline Village who are seeking facts surrounding the need for another school bond requested by the Washoe County School Board (WCSB).