Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Day 44: Election Prayer Focus Nevada


Nevada - Sagebrush State; Silver State; Battleborn State


Motto: All for Our Country


Capital City: Carson City

Largest City: Las Vegas


Leaders

Governor Jim Gibbons (R)

Senator Harry Reid (D)

Senator John Ensign (R)

1. Shelley Berkley (D)
2. Dean Heller (R)
3. Jon C. Porter (R)


Prayer Points

*Declare revival comes to the state of Nevada.
*Declare signs and wonders follow the preaching of the Word in Nevada.
*Declare the people of Nevada are open to receive the truth of the Gospel.
*Declare the leaders of Nevada walk in wisdom and the fear of the Lord.
*Declare prosperity comes to the state of Nevada.
*Declare heaven’s strategies come to the leaders of Nevada.
*Declare protection over the state of Nevada.
*Declare protection over the National Guard, military personnel, and military bases in Nevada.
*Declare Christians in Nevada get out and vote according to Biblical principles.
*Declare an accurate accounting of the vote in Nevada.


Trappers and traders, including Jedediah Smith and Peter Skene Ogden, entered the Nevada area in the 1820s. In 1843–1845, John C. Frémont and Kit Carson explored the Great Basin and Sierra Nevada. The U.S. obtained the region in 1848 following the Mexican War, and the first permanent settlement was a Mormon trading post near present-day Genoa.
The driest state in the nation, with an average annual rainfall of only about 7 in., much of Nevada is uninhabited, sagebrush-covered desert. The wettest part of the state receives about 40 in. of precipitation per year, while the driest spot has less than 4 in. per year.
Nevada was made famous by the discovery of the Comstock Lode, the richest known U.S. silver deposit, in 1859, and its mines have produced large quantities of gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, mercury, barite, and tungsten. Oil was discovered in 1954. Gold now far exceeds all other minerals in value of production.
In 1931, the state created two industries, divorce and gambling. For many years, Reno and Las Vegas were the “divorce capitals of the nation.” More liberal divorce laws in many states have ended this distinction, but Nevada is still the gambling capital of the U.S. and a leading entertainment center. State gambling taxes account for 34.1% of general fund tax revenues. Although Nevada leads the nation in per capita gambling revenue, it ranks only tenth in total gambling revenue.
The state's leading agricultural industry is cattle and calves. Agricultural crops consist mainly of hay, alfalfa seed, barley, wheat, and potatoes.
Nevada manufactures gaming equipment; lawn and garden irrigation devices; titanium products; seismic and machinery monitoring devices; and specialty printing. (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108242.html)


The state's nickname is "The Silver State" due to the large number of silver deposits that were discovered and mined there. In 1864, Nevada became the 36th state to enter the union, and the phrase "Battle Born" on the state flag reflects the state's entry on the Union side during the American Civil War. Its first settlement was called Mormon Station.
Nevada is the seventh-largest state in area, and geographically covers the Mojave Desert in the south to the Great Basin in the north. About 86% of the state's land is owned by the U.S federal government under various jurisdictions both civilian and military. As of 2006, there were about 2.6 million residents, with over 85% of the population residing in the metropolitan areas around Las Vegas and Reno. The state is well known for its easy marriage and divorce proceedings, legalization of gambling and, in a few counties, legalized brothels.
In 2005, the state issued a specialty license plate via the Nevada Commission on Tourism that lists the name of the state as Nevăda to help with the pronunciation problem. The local pronunciation of the state's name is not /nəˈvæ.də/ (as in the "a" in "father"), but /nəˈvɑ.də/ (as in the "a" in "glad"). Local residents - particularly natives of the state - resent hearing Nevada's name pronounced differently in the national media, a problem that has crystallized with increased coverage of the state following the 2008 Presidential Primary Elections.


Gaming and Labor
Gambling erupted once more following a recession in the early 20th century, helping to build the city of Las Vegas.
Unregulated gambling was common place in the early Nevada mining towns but outlawed in 1909 as part of a nation-wide anti-gaming crusade. Due to subsequent declines in mining output and the decline of the agricultural sector during the Great Depression, Nevada re-legalized gambling on March 19, 1931, with approval from the legislature. At the time, the leading proponents of gambling expected that it would be a short term fix until the state's economic base widened to include less cyclical industries. However, re-outlawing gambling has never been seriously considered since, and the industry has become Nevada's primary source of revenue today.
The Hoover Dam, located outside Las Vegas near Boulder City, was constructed in the years 1932–1935. Thousands of workers from across the country came to build the dam, and providing for their needs in turn required many more workers. The boom in population is likely to have fueled the re-legalization of gambling, alike present-day industry. Both Hoover Dam and later war industries such as the Basic Magnesium Plant first started the growth of the southern area of the state near Las Vegas. Over the last 75 years, Clark County has grown in relation to the Reno area, and today encompasses most of the state's population.


Nuclear Testing
The Nevada Test Site, 65 miles (105 km) Northwest of the City of Las Vegas, was founded on January 11, 1951 for the testing of nuclear weapons. The site is composed of approximately 1,350 square miles (3,500 km2) of desert and mountainous terrain. Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site began with a one-kiloton of TNT (4 terajoule) bomb dropped on Frenchman Flats on January 27, 1951. The last atmospheric test was conducted on July 17, 1962 and the underground testing of weapons continued until September 23, 1992. The location is known for the highest amount of concentrated nuclear detonated weapons in the U.S. It is also the home of Area 51.
Over 80% of the state's area is owned by the federal government. The primary reason for this is that homesteads were not permitted in large enough sizes to be viable in the arid conditions that prevail throughout desert Nevada. Instead, early settlers would homestead land surrounding a water source, and then graze livestock on the adjacent public land, which is useless for agriculture without access to water (this pattern of ranching still prevails). The deficiencies in the Homestead Act as applied to Nevada were probably due to a lack of understanding of the Nevada environment, although some firebrands (so-called "Sagebrush Rebels") maintain that it was due to pressure from mining interests to keep land out of the hands of common folk.


Religion
Major religious affiliations of the people of Nevada are:
Roman Catholic – 27%
Protestant
Mainline – 11%
Evangelical – 13%
Other Protestant – 2%
Latter-day Saint/ Mormon – 11%
Muslim – 2%
Jewish – 1%
Other Religions – 1%
Unaffiliated – 20%


Politics

Registration is nearly evenly split between the two major parties. According to official statistics, 38.1% of voters are registered Republicans, 41.7% are Democrats and the remaining 20.1% are considered Independents. As a result, Nevada remains a swing state in both state and federal politics.


Nevada Laws

In 1900, Nevada's population was the smallest of all states and was shrinking, as the difficulties of living in a "barren desert" began to outweigh the lure of silver for many early settlers. Historian Lawrence Friedman has explained what happened next:
Nevada, in a burst of ingenuity, built an economy by exploiting its sovereignty. Its strategy was to legalize all sorts of things that were illegal in California ... after easy divorce came easy marriage and casino gambling.
Even prostitution is legal in Nevada (under the form of licensed brothels) in most rural counties (it is however illegal in Clark County, which contains Las Vegas, in Washoe County, which contains Reno, in Carson City, and in two other counties).

Nevada's early reputation as a "divorce haven" arose from the fact that, prior to the no-fault divorce revolution in the 1970s, divorces were quite difficult to obtain in the United States. Already having legalized gambling and prostitution, Nevada continued the trend of boosting its profile by adopting one of the most liberal divorce statutes in the nation.


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