Meet the new year

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

You want a happy end-of-the-year Editor’s Note? Not this year. I’m writing this in kind of a pissy mood as the calendar counts down to 2016. I’m more than a little irritated by yesterday’s news that the cops who shot a 12-year-old boy, Tamir Rice, while he was playing in a park, won’t face a jury. This case should have gone to a public trial in front of a jury and judge.

Another news item that’s really bothering me was the decision by the Nevada Public Utilities Commission to force people who invested their own money into solar energy production to pay for the aging infrastructure favored by NV Energy. They buy my energy at wholesale and sell it back to me at retail now? And they charge me so that people who don’t upgrade their energy production don’t have to pay for their wasteful and environmentally unsustainable energy? Look, I get that Warren Buffet is trying to get a few more years’ worth of profits out of NV Energy, but their philosophy of profits over people and planet is shameful. Gov. Brian Sandoval once again showed his policies are in no way more intelligent than those of his predecessor Jim Gibbons—and with all the corporate giveaways, they’re probably worse. Don’t any of you plutocrats have any concern for what you’re doing to your children’s future?

I don’t have a crystal ball, but I believe these sorts of regressive policies are on their way out. NV Energy will continue to rip me off until the moment the Tesla battery is available, and then I’ll only buy natural gas from the utility, and I may get rid of my gas appliances. California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a law preventing the use of secret grand juries to examine incidents of police violence.

I’m the eternal optimist. I believe that people are becoming more attuned to their own effects on the planet, and that some humans will eventually figure things out. But man.

Many of you will read this on January 1. I hope you’ll have a Bloody Mary and think about how you personally can help make the world better this year.

Happy New Year, my friends.