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“The idea is to make Carson Now a one-stop site for all of your local news,” said site creator Kirk Caraway. “Bringing together Carson Now, with what Dave Morgan has built with News Carson City, is a huge step forward in serving the media needs for Carson residents.”

Morgan will continue to write stories for Carson Now from his new home in Newport, Oregon, where he is working to duplicate the success he has had here, building a local news website.

Beginning Monday, March 1, all new stories will be posted to Carson Now. The News Carson City website will be kept online to preserve the past stories.

Please visit Carson Now for the latest news. For more information, contact us here.

Below, Caraway and Morgan talk about the merger of the two websites:

An autopsy is expected to reveal the cause of death. The investigation is open and continuing.

Unless you had your olfactory nerve cauterized, the smell that permeates Nevada and Carson City is the malodorous stench of politics wafting through the air.

This is perhaps the time to reflect on how we have bastardized our own form of government.

Federal, state, and local elected officials, along with potential candidates are huddling with their political consultants to decide which issues will strike a chord with the electorate. If no important issues exist then they will create them.

As I write this commentary, the pollsters are hard at work gathering data, while hacks from both political parties, along with “non-partisan” candidates are on telephones glorifying their respective “chosen ones.” A list is drawn up of the items that people want (as opposed to what is actually needed) from their government, everything from bike paths, ice skating rinks, a new library for Carson City, to pay increases for the “protected classes” known as government and city employees.

Today, government at all levels is blamed for everything from bad highways to a system of social services crumbling under its own weight. We blame the politicians for letting government become too bloated and inefficient, for imposing absurd mandates and prohibitions on business and upon the individual, for micro-managing our lives and confiscating our earnings.

The blame is misplaced!

We are to blame!

No one else!

We are all guilty!

Not the politicians!

Not the bureaucrats.

To curse the inefficiencies of government is to curse the face in the mirror. The local and state government animals, by their very nature, have a voracious appetite, but they never would have grown so large had we not overfed the corpulent beasts.

Our Constitution did not design government to do anything but implement the provisions and principles enumerated in the document. When we demand government at all levels to assume functions outside that sphere, we are requiring it to do something for which it was not designed to do, and because of those demands, government performs those functions poorly and inefficiently.

As a country, state, and here in our own community, we now legislate philanthropy, instead of being charitable. Less than a third of the taxes that fund government social programs actually escape the bureaucracy. Conversely, individuals and private charities spend less than a third of receipts on administration. If someone is abusing the generosity of private charity, they can be dealt with on a stern and private individual level. Encouragement toward becoming self-supporting is more compelling when the donor and recipient are face to face.

As a country, state, and city, we now legislate morality, civility and common sense instead of practicing the tenets of these doctrines. We allow the federal, state, and local governments to tell us what we may watch on television, how we can medicate ourselves, how we must keep records and run our business, even how, and whom we can like and dislike. We have lost sight of the differences between that which government must do to ensure domestic tranquility, and that which should be left to the conscience of the individual. If I elect not to install a wheelchair ramp in my place of business, the marketplace should judge my punishment, not government.

I firmly believe that government at all levels has the moral and constitutional obligation to promote the general welfare, not provide it or attempt to legislate a particular outcome. To promote means to nurture, not coerce. When we, the people, through the instrument of our government use the threat of force and incarceration to make into law that which should be discretionary to the individual, we usurp the rights and good will of the individual.

We create instead disrespect for those fundamental laws needed to preserve peace and tranquility. We diminish the authority of law in the “real” world beyond the brick and mortar of Congress, the Nevada State Legislature, or City Hall.

Have you checked your mirror lately?

However, Buckley added that “there is something in the negotiated budget bill that everyone hates. But that’s the way democracy works.”

The settlement is said to involve easing class size reductions in grades 1 through 3, as well as dropping mandatory textbook upgrades for the immediate future.

On the revenue side, mining is expected to come up with a heftier contribution to the state budget, but only until the next regular session of the legislature figures out a long term funding solution. Gaming’s contribution to the solution remains unclear, although gaming lobbyists were quoted as saying that “gaming is all out,” because they’re already under enough financial strain due to the recession.

Legislative staff was crunching the numbers Saturday night, with a possible vote on the final bill sometime on Sunday and then a signature from Governor Gibbons to make it law.

This latest band-aid solution may make it possible for the state budget to last until the next regular session of the legislature. Many lawmakers were predicting, when the next session convenes next February, the budget shortfall will be more than twice as bad as it is today. Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, shook his finger at gaming, mining and corporations, saying if they want a state of Nevada to operate in, they are going to have to stop asking residents to subsidize their businesses through the taxes they don’t pay.

Carson River Community Bank customers are now customers of Heritage Bank of Nevada. The FDIC says all accounts of $250,000 or less are insured and that there is no reason to worry about their funds. The funds are protected and safe.

Carson River Community Bank was the object of a recent order by state banking regulators to acquire greater assets to cover their troubled commercial loans. Carson River Community Bank was one of many local banks that got wrapped up in the commercial real estate boom prior to the beginning of the recession. When the recession hit, Carson River Community Bank was caught with a large portfolio of non-performing commercial loans that prompted an order for them to stop making any further commercial loans and that the current CEO/Manager of the bank be replaced. He was. In contrast, Heritage Bank of Nevada officials claim their bank is strong and sound because they refused to participate in the recent real estate market bubble that burst and sent the country into a financial tail-spin.

Other local community banks that have gone under due to failed commercial loan investments include Irwin Union Bank, Colonial Bank and 1st National Bank of Nevada. Many banking analysts predict there will be another wave of small community bank failures in the year ahead as the recession continues to stress their loan portfolios.

Gibbons and lawmakers have also been talking about further cuts to state worker pay. State workers have already been hit with furlough days amounting to a 4.6% pay cut. Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley says it’s really more like 11% when you figure in loss of merit and longevity pay and other lost benefits. Legislative democrats say state workers should not be penalized any more. Gibbons wants a couple more hours a month taken away from them.

Budget talks resume Saturday morning. The Special Session is expected to run through Sunday because the bills bubbling up from the negotiations will take time for be formally written and then passed by both the Assembly and Senate. If they’re vetoed by Governor Gibbons, the legislature would then need a little more time to attempt what would expected to be a successful override of those vetoes.

Douglas County authorities have arrested Benjamin Schuler, 24 of Gardnerville, on charges that he lured a child under the age of 14 with the intent to persuade the child to leave its home. Authorities say Schuler communicated with two 13 year old girls via e-mail, with conversations of a sexual nature. At one point, they say, he tried to lure one of them to come over to his house.

Schuler met the girls through his employment as a basketball coach for the Douglas County School District. Authorities claim that Schuler had actually touched one of the girls in an inappropriate manner.

Schuler is in the Douglas County Jail on charges of luring a child under the age of 14. His bail was set at $25,000 cash only.

He was Frank Bindley, 55, a former police officer with the Las Vegas Metro Police Department. The report came into the 9-1-1 dispatch center that a gunshot had been heard coming from an apartment off So. Carson Street. There had also been a report that the shooting may have been a homicide. First arriving deputies set up a perimeter around the complex to intercept anyone fleeing the area. None was seen or heard.

Deputies were told that a man with a gun was barricaded inside apartment 68 and had threatened anyone who came in after him. At that point the SWAT team was activated. In the meantime, two deputies, who belong to the SWAT team, managed to gain entry to the apartment and found Bindley sitting in a chair with a serious wound to his chest. They say he was still holding the gun. They retrieved the weapon and summoned paramedics who were staged just down the driveway. They quickly rushed in to try to save Bindley’s life. They called for a Careflight chopper. But within ten minutes they cancelled it. Bindley had died.

Normally the news media doesn’t identify suicide victims. But in this case, the flurry of police activity and a threat to responding officers triggered the public’s right to know what their first line responders were going through while protecting life and property. It’s often a difficult and dangerous job indeed.

This story has another tragic element in that Bindley’s sons are both entering law enforcement themselves, perhaps inspired by their father’s service in the Las Vegas area. Bindley’s older son, who lived with his father at the apartment, had recently become a Carson City Sheriff’s Deputy and has won wide praise and demonstrated great promise even as a rookie law enforcement officer. One deputy on scene last evening commented to NewsCarsonCity.com that Bindley’s son is a rare example of an up-and-coming professional lawman, and that “the department is blessed to have him” as part of the Carson City Sheriff’s Office. The officer’s younger brother is a Sheriff’s Explorer, a common launching pad for entering law enforcement.

Frank Bindley had been with the Las Vegas Metro Police Department for a number of years, and had been forced to retire after suffering an injury in an accident. Bindley’s wife died in 2007.

In response, Gibbons said he would veto legislation passed this week to make Nevada eligible to receive $175 million in federal Race to the Top program. Gibbons, who introduced the idea himself, complained he didn’t like the wording included in the bill.

A show of hands in the Assembly also indicated that there is little legislative support for immediately closing two Nevada prisons, including Nevada State Prison in Carson City. Lawmakers have complained that there is too little information available on the proposal to make a decision during such a short special session.

And while Gibbons has demanded that the session be over at the stroke of midnight Sunday night, legislative leaders say if they need more time they’ll take it, even if they have to go to the State Supreme Court to get the go-ahead. They say Gibbons does not have the authority to shut down the legislature.