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Using the most recent data available, the online tax research organization, Tax Foundation finds nearly a third of all state revenue is still provided by the federal government in 2012. That’s about a dollar in ever three in state coffers.

The lowest recipient is Alaska at 20.0 percent, followed by North Dakota (20.5 percent), Virginia (23.5 percent), Hawaii (23.5 percent), and Connecticut (23.6 percent). Mississippi got 45.3 percent of its total state general revenues from the federal government (the largest in the country), followed by Louisiana (44.0 percent), Tennessee (41.0 percent), South Dakota (40.8 percent), and Missouri (39.4 percent).

Meanwhile Nevada placed 44th, accepting nearly 26-percent of its revenue from Washington D.C. The Tax Foundation also ranks the Silver State at 3rd place in their ‘State Business Tax Climate Index,’ based on corporate, individual income, sales, unemployment insurance and property taxes.

Unfortunately, Nevada still has a projected $162 million budget shortfall for this year. Expect Governor Brian Sandoval to propose a tax restructuring plan to boost state spending by hundreds of millions of dollars during his ‘State of the State’ speech, January 15.

This isn’t about abortion per se; it’s about how the U.S. media and the legal system use certain words to frame their agendas.

News agencies report: “Police say three adults, two children and an unborn child were killed in the crash,” or “Authorities investigating the discovery of two fetuses found dumped along the side the road.” Yet according to Merriam-Webster, a fetus is a human being in the later stages of development before it’s born.

Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies from coast-to-coast will charge a person with murder in the death of an unborn child: “The trial for a man charged in the 2012 deaths of his girlfriend and an unborn child…”  or “Woman  charged with the feticide and fetal murder of her unborn child.  After all, they never charge anyone with a crime following the lawful termination of a pregnancy.

It would seem that neither has considered the dichotomy between a ‘fetus’ and ‘unborn child,’ other than one sounds cold and clinical — while the other is cause an emotional response.

President Obama wants everyone to have two “free” years of junior college. In his recent “State of the Nation,” address he laid out new tax packages that includes a $320 billion hike to help pay for this plan.

But here’s what he didn’t say…

Under current law, 529-Plans work like Roth IRAs — you put money in, and the money grows tax-free for college. Distributions are tax-free provided they are to pay for college.

If Obama has his way, 529-Plans will no longer be tax-free, instead those earnings will be taxed upon withdrawal, even if it is used to pay for college.  In addition to taxing college savings plans, Obama is calling for a hike in capital gains taxes, an increase in the death tax, a bank tax and an increase in retirement plan taxes.

It’s nothing more than a redistribution system as those who are saving and planning ahead for college will have to foot the bill for those who didn’t.

“So, what songs reminds you of your pre-teen years?” was the question I asked on Facebook. I received a number of wonderful answers, but one really intrigued me.

That person relayed that her mother refused to let her sing the words, “Yummy, yummy, yummy — I got love in my tummy.” Not being familiar with the lyrics, I looked it up and learned they’re from a song with the same title.

Evidently, it was a hit for the group ‘Ohio Express’ in 1968. And after listening to the song, I could understand why her mother wouldn’t allow her to sing it around their house.

It also caused me to recall a situation I found myself in at about 14-years-old when my mom forbid me to listen to the song, “Season’s in the Sun,” by Terry Jacks, because she felt it was a tune about death.

“You’re only a kid – you don’t need to be listening to songs about dying!” she exclaimed.

Up to that point in my life I had never really paid much attention to the words of any song. In fact, half the time I couldn’t understand (and still don’t know) what the singer was saying.

I mean after all does anyone really understand what’s being said in Manfred Mann’s “Blinded by the Light?”

One afternoon, I came home from school to find Mom in the kitchen blasting the song “Teen Angel,” from the eight-track player in the living room. I turned the song down and pulled the tape from the machine.

Mom exploded, “Who gave you permission to do that?!”

Holding the tape up, I calmly answered, “No one. But since Adam and the girls are home, they shouldn’t be hearing songs about death.”

That was my second mistake with my first being the removal of the tape. My third — getting within arms reach of my very angry mother.

President Obama made an unplanned trip to the French Embassy in Washington, D.C.  During the brief visit he signed a condolence book, ending the entry with “Vive la France,” honoring those killed by terrorists at Charlie Hebdo magazine.

Earlier in the day, however he zipped right passed the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Hospital to a high school where he delivered a speech on housing recovery. This is the VA where at least 40 patients died awaiting appointments for care.

His priority instead, was to lecture a partisan group of people about the need for more big government programs. And afterwards, Obama made time for an unscheduled stop at a near-by housing development for a photo-op.

As a U.S. military veteran and French-born to boot, let me exclaim — ‘Va te faire foutre, Obama!’

New York Congressman and founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus Charlie Rangel claims he saw plenty of American Army dead during the Korean War. But the deaths of black soldiers meant more to him than the deaths of whites — even if they all wore the same uniform.

“When I was in combat, and I’m telling you, I saw more dead people, but I never was moved until I saw dead people that looked like me in my uniform,” the Democrat said. “It does make a difference”.

I cannot understand how anyone can support such prejudice.

The terror attack and murder of 12 people in Paris, France can happen in the U.S. too, especially since we’re already embroiled in this mess.

In February 2006, the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published a series of 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The same pictures had been featured in the Nordic daily Jyllands-Posten on September 16, 2005.

The Danish publication triggered anti-Danish protests across the Muslim world in which an estimated 130 people were killed. It also caused the French government to temporarily closed 20 embassies as a precaution.

Numerous violent plots related to the cartoons have been discovered in the years since the main protests in early 2006. These have primarily targeted editor Flemming Rose, cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, the property or employees of Jyllands-Posten and other newspapers that printed the cartoons,and representatives of the Danish state.

On New Year Day 2010, police stop a would-be assassin in Westergaard’s home. In February 2011, the attacker was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Also in 2010, three men living in Norway were arrested for planning an attack against Jyllands-Posten; two were convicted. In the U.S., David Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana were convicted of planning terror attacks against Jyllands-Posten and sentenced in 2013.

As for Charlie Hebdo, the publication became a target of threats, forcing employees to be placed under police protection. But any attempt at intimidating the magazine failed.

Then in 2011, after the magazine named the Prophet Muhammad as its “editor-in-chief,” their offices were firebombed, and its website was hacked. Then in 2013 the magazine publishing what it called a “halal” comic book on the life of the Prophet Mohammad.

Now the Charlie Hebdo story has taken a deadly turn.

Meanwhile Al Jazeera America’s Arthur Goldhammer writes: “The satire that Charlie Hebdo exemplified was more blasphemous than political, and its roots lie deep in European history, dating from a time when in order to challenge authority, one had to confront divinity itself. In that one respect, the fanatics are not wrong: Charlie Hebdo was out to undermine the sacred as such.”

I don’t agree with Goldhammer, but I would never threaten him or his right to say, write or publish what he believes.

Dothan, Alabama police say Robert Lawrence, an unarmed white-man, went to an animal shelter to turn in a stray animal and became “unruly.” This after workers at the shelter demanded his government issued ID.

According to news reports, all he carried was a notarized affidavit from the state’s Motor Vehicle Administration. When they refused to accept this as identification, he got pissed and the law called.

After police arrived, a fight broke out between officers and Lawrence. This resulted in Lawrence being fatally shot in the stomach.

So far, there’ve been no DOJ actions taken by the Obama Administration to stop animal shelters from requiring ID, unlike the many lawsuits they’ve filed to halt Voter ID. And curiously, Al Sharpton has said nothing.

Maybe it’s time to create a new ‘hashtag.’

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has been in Nevada’s news cycle a lot this past year because of his company’s ‘gigafactory.’ But here is something we’re not being told by those same news sources.

Musk says the human race should “be concerned” about the computer singularity hypothesis, or idea that artificial intelligence may one day advance past human control and radically change civilization.

“The timeframe is not immediate, but we should be concerned,” Musk warns. “There needs to be a lot more work on A-I (Artificial Intelligence) safety.”

There could be more to his massive ‘battery factory,’ located in an isolated patch of the Nevada desert.