John L. Smith

1 month ago | thenevadaindependent.com | John L. Smith |JOhn Smith

A new Major League Baseball season has begun, and perhaps Resorts World Las Vegas has found its winning team. It’s certainly paying for it. This past week, the resort and its parent company agreed to pay $10.5 million to settle a state Gaming Control Board complaint stemming from an ongoing federal investigation into illegal bookmaking and money laundering that exposed a collapse in the casino’s gambling compliance system. The investigation has been the talk of the Strip for more than two years.

1 month ago | thenevadaindependent.com | John L. Smith |JOhn Smith

SB69 would require companies seeking Comstock-sized tax abatements to agree to defray the costs of their impact on government services. I love Nevada history, and you’ll find plenty of it in Virginia City. From the Fourth Ward School to Piper’s Opera House, its streets are lined with reminders of Nevada’s frontier past.

1 month ago | thenevadaindependent.com | John L. Smith |JOhn Smith

Did you hear the one about the 360-year-old who’s still kicking around inside the Social Security database? Or the millions of centenarians — some as old as 160 — who might be stealing your hard-earned benefits? If you watched chaos King Donald Trump’s marathon state-of-confusion address to Congress, you heard all that and a lot more. Trump dealt disinformation between standing ovations from Republicans and corny protests from Democrats for a numbing one hour, 39 minutes and 32 seconds.

1 month ago | thenevadaindependent.com | John L. Smith |JOhn Smith

Northern Nevada’s full-throttle race to embrace data centers received thoughtful push back from an eclectic group of citizens this week during a Reno City Council meeting. They gathered Wednesday morning to persuade their elected officials to agree to a six-month moratorium on the approval process to ensure new data centers aren’t unduly stressing the power grid and community water supply, or otherwise harming the environment in one of the nation’s fastest-warming regions.

1 month ago | thenevadaindependent.com | John L. Smith |JOhn Smith

Not many years ago, Nevada Republican Party activist Tony Dane was known as a notorious and unrepentant practitioner of political dirty tricks. With his robocalling phone bank working overtime, Dane was capable of sliming Democratic Party enemies with innuendo, deception and outright fabrication. From the sound of things, he made a pretty good living at it. He was even capable of conflating his gutter tactics with doing the Lord’s work.