Author

Hugh Jackson

Hugh Jackson

Hugh Jackson is the editor of the Nevada Current, which first published this commentary.

COMMENTARY

The only bad thing about switching from gas is it isn’t done yet

By: - October 10, 2022

One day in 1991 when I was a reporter in Casper, Wyoming, the Amoco oil refinery shut down. Needless to say Amoco blamed all those darned burdensome federal environmental regulations. Those regulations (under a Republican administration at the time but I digress) must have been incredibly harsh and burdensome indeed: If I recall, a few […]

COMMENTARY

The FBI went to Trump’s house and Nevada Republicans couldn’t be happier

By: - August 11, 2022

Just last month Trump was right here in Las Vegas preaching about how much he loves law enforcement. But then law enforcement came to his house. The FBI reportedly went to Trump’s compound or lair or whatever it is in Florida to retrieve classified documents and materials that aren’t his to keep. To which the […]

COMMENTARY

Enslavers and elitists, the Founding Fathers are not sacred. The GOP should stop worshipping them.

By: - April 4, 2022

When they’re not busy accusing her of being too lenient on pedophiles and too hard on white people, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee holding hearings on Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson purport to worship an originalist judicial philosophy. That means they like judges who promise, all Antonin Scalia-like, to base judicial rulings on what (they prefer to think) the Constitution’s framers intended.

COMMENTARY

Some truths about gas prices that Biden critics would rather you not consider

By: - March 7, 2022

Let’s talk about gas prices. In 2020, the price of oil crashed, even falling to less than zero one day. Traders actually had to pay buyers to get them to take oil contracts off their hands. Oil companies would prefer not to sell oil unless they can make money off it. Oil companies are just […]

Republic? Democracy? Deconstructing the political right’s favored terminology

By: - February 16, 2022

“We’re a republic, not a democracy” is a thing Republicans are fond of saying. Michele Fiore, whose insatiable thirst for right-wing celebrity status has led her to run for governor of Nevada, said it during a forum with five-sixths of the rest of the GOP gubernatorial field the other day. Except Fiore, always the innovator, turned the tired phrase around to put the “we are not a democracy” part first and then firmly pronounced...

COMMENTARY

Republicans have no inflation policy, but they’re loving inflation politics

By: - December 13, 2021

“Sky-high inflation,” said (Nevada U.S. Senate candidate) Adam Laxalt, while rattling off “failures of Joe Biden’s agenda” in a statement to CNN. Citing “historically bad inflation” while hammering the Democrats’ Build Back Better agenda, the National Republican Senatorial Committee says “vulnerable Democrats like … Catherine Cortez Masto have already made clear where they stand: they’re […]

Why won’t that uncaring Joe Biden just snap his fingers and lower gas prices?

By: - November 30, 2021

Hint: It has something to do with the realities of a market economy “In less than a year, Joe Biden has crippled our domestic energy production,” Adam Laxalt (a Republican candidate for a Nevada U.S. Senate seat) tweeted last week. “We’re feeling the effects of Democrat (sic) leadership right now every time we go to the gas pump,” reads a recent fundraising missive from the Nevada Republican Party.