We at Various Things & Stuff have volunteered to teach at a high school journalism symposium Friday morning, so our normal rantings won’t be seen. We’ll be back Monday with all-new episodes.

Review-Journal business reporter Jennifer Robison must be a terribly conflicted person.

Back in June, Robison penned a long story about how Nevada’s 2003 tax increases were oppressing poor small business people who were just trying to make a living. The story raised the specter of businesses leaving Nevada — or not moving here in the first place — because of taxes. And, Robison’s piece quoted not a single tax proponent (although it did give state Sen. Dina Titus a brief chance to make the case).

CityLife responded with its own piece, correcting errors and reminding folks taxes pay for nifty things like roads and police and courts, all of which help businessmen.

But then, on Aug. 6, Robison wrote another story, this one headlined “Business bullish on Las Vegas.” It reported how the Nevada Development Authority had lured 46 new businesses to town in fiscal year 2005, and helped another 11 expand. She quoted authority President Somer Hollingsworth extolling Nevada’s “…low taxes and business friendly state and local governments.”

Hmmm, interesting. The same writer, two totally contradictory stories. Was she in some way apologizing for June’s slanted and questionable piece? And is Nevada the low-tax haven she wrote about in August, or the high-tax hellhole she slammed in June?

Ladies and gentlemen, we have our answer! It seems that Nevada has been named as the fifth best state in business friendliness by the Development Counsellors International of New York. She quotes Michael Cutri, a Los Angeles real estate broker, saying the state has a “favorable regulatory environment, level of taxation and cost of doing business.”

So, should we go with two out of three? The R-J never did publish a correction or apology for Robison’s initial June piece, at least none that we could find. But it’s published two subsequent stories by her now that leave us with one, inescapable conclusion: The piece she wrote back in June is simpy flat wrong.

Full disclosure: CityLife and the R-J are both owned by the Stephens Media Group, although we’re pretty sure they don’t like to admit it.

You’ve got to love U.S. Rep. Jon Porter. He’s a man who speaks entirely in sound bites, but does it in such a charming, endearing way, hardly anybody pauses to question him.

Hardly anybody, that is. We at Various Things & Stuff are immune to his Jedi mind powers.

Take today, for example, when the Review-Journal’s Steve Tetreault asked Porter if he’s going to return the $25,000 he’s taken from indicted U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay. Porter responded by saying DeLay is innocent until proven guilty, and that if DeLay is convicted, Porter promised to return the cash.

Fair enough; DeLay, as Porter said, is entitled to his day in court, and if Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle can’t make his case, DeLay’s entitled to go free. (It’s unclear what will happen to him politically, since under House rules, he was forced to step down as majority leader after the indictment was handed up.)

But then Porter tried to take his magical spin-language one step too far, saying it would be wrong to link him to DeLay, since he’s proud of his 20-year record of political service.

See that? He’s proud of his record, which nobody has questioned, so we shouldn’t ask about his ties to DeLay, which plenty of people have questioned, including the Nevada State Democratic Party.

In addition to the usual knocks against Porter — that he’s taken $25,000 from DeLay and his PAC; that he donated $5,000 to DeLay’s legal defense fund; that he votes 94 percent of the time in lockstep with DeLay and other House leaders — let’s not forget a few other things.

• DeLay has personally come to Nevada to raise money for Porter, back in 2000 when Porter was running against U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley.

• Although he won his seat in 2002 and defended it in 2004 with very comfortable margins, Porter is still on the DeLay-created list of 10 most vulnerable incumbents, which allowed him to raise an estimated $150,000 for his own re-election. And Porter got the nod despite other Republicans being in far more desperate straits. (Then again, at least one of those Republicans, U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, opposed that rules change that Porter supported, and thus incurred DeLay’s wrath.)

• Porter voted for the changes to House ethics rules that would have allowed DeLay to stay in his leadership post even while under indicted. Republicans, including Porter, wisely reversed course on that and restored the rules. Thus, DeLay was forced to step down.

So why should we not link Porter — he of the proud 20 years of political service — to DeLay again?

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was indicted today, according to news reports. The indictment forced DeLay to step down from his leadership post — although not from Congress. (Under rules House Republicans adopted, then later abandoned, DeLay could even have held on to his leadership position, too.)

“I have done nothing wrong,” DeLay said of the indictment, on campaign finance charges. He attributed the grand jury’s action to a partisan attack launched by Democratic Travis County, Texas, District Attorney Ronnie Earle.

But controversy has swirled around DeLay for years, from foreign travel arranged and paid for by embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff to the bare-knuckles redistricting plan that saw the GOP increase its numbers in the Lone Star state delegation to campaign finance. He’s yet to be convicted of anything, of course, but we’ve been suspicious of the guy for a long time.

So, let’s do the math: The House Majority Leader is indicted and forced to step down; the Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist, is under investigation for alleged insider trading by the Securities & Exchange Commission. And then there’s President Bush, whose approval rating is in free-fall thanks to his mishandling of Iraq and Hurricane Katrina.

Not a good week to be a Republican in leadership, is it? But don’t go by us; we’re obvious left-wing partisans. Then again, we haven’t been indicted or investigated, either. So there’s that.

Let’s go to the Various Things & Stuff mailbag, where we find an e-mail from our only lookalike (outside of Drew Carey, that is), state Sen. Bob Beers. Beers, as you’ll recall, is running for governor, but he took time out to question our characterization of U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons’ 2003 speech to the Legislature as critical of Gov. Kenny Guinn’s tax plan.

We looked over Gibbons speech (it’s been a long time since 2003, and our memory is not so good). And while we agree with Beers that Gibbons did not criticize Guinn or his tax plan by name, we also argue it’s impossible to miss what Gibbons was saying. And what he was saying was not sympathetic to Guinn, either.

Take a look at a few paragraphs:

“The slightest push in the wrong direction will destabilize our economic recovery,” Gibbons said, early in the address.

“My friends, there is a legitimate concern from our fellow Nevadans that tax policy, whether it originates in Washington, D.C., or here in Carson City, is often being formulated under the wrong set of priorities,” he said. “As Sir Winston Churchill once said at a time when England was also suffering from some of the same conditions that we are in the United States. ‘A nation trying to lift itself into prosperity by raising taxes is like a ban standing in a bucket trying to lift himself up by the handle.’ We could actually use some of that Nevada-born common sense in fighting for tax and spending discipline in our nation’s capital.”

Hmmm. That doesn’t seem to supportive of poor Guinn, does it? Let’s read on.

“But now more than ever, we must carefully determine where we draw the line between balancing a government programs’ checkbook against the taxpayers’ checkbook. As families all across Nevada realize, you base your spending on how much you earn; you don’t base your earnings on how much you want to spend. The hurdle presented by the [Gibbons-authored] Tax Restraint Initiative was motivated by these very principles and it will, once again, play a role in this historic session of your Legislature.”

Sorry, but we have to conclude that these passages were nothing less than a primary school lecture to Guinn on how to run state business, delivered just one month after Guinn himself had addressed a joint session of the Legislature to present his doomed gross-receipts tax plan. Sure, he didn’t name names, but it was criticism all the same. As Beers surely knows, in politics, people often don’t say what they really mean, but find ways to say it anyway so that they can later claim they never did. This is surely one of those cases.

So, with much respect, we stand by our item.

And another correspondent, who must remain nameless to protect his position at a white-shoe law firm in town, writes to complain that we’re not updating the blog in a timely manner. To him, we say, you’re right, and we apologize. Things have been crazy around the Various Things & Stuff offices lately, and we’ve been negligent in our postings. We’ll endeavor to have each days’ information before your eyes by noon every day.

Former Federal Emergency Management Agency Michael Brown is turning out to be a Class-A prick. After bungling the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts and returning to Washington, D.C., in shame, Brown found the courage to go before a House committee and … blame others.

“My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional,” Brown told the panel. (The hurricane actually made landfall on Monday, Aug. 29.)

That’s funny, because we were about to suggest that his biggest mistake was not finding a way to evacuate hundreds of poor residents of New Orleans, many of whom later drowned. But more on that in a second.

“I’ve overseen over 150 presidentally declared disasters. I know what I’m doing and I think I do a pretty darn good job of it,” Brown added.

Really? We know President Bush thinks “Brownie” did “a heck of a job” in the days immediately following the disaster, but here’s our question: If he does such a good job, why was he sent packing back to D.C., and why did he later resign his post? (More on that in a second, too.)

Brown tried to say that he personally tried to persuade Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco to order an evacuation, but she didn’t. Alas, that’s not true: Blanco did give the evacuation order, and she did it two days before Katrina hit, on Aug. 27.

And Brown’s testimony got some negative reviews from other people, too. U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., lambasted him thusly: “I’m happy you left. That kind of look in the lights like a deer tells me you weren’t capable of doing the job.” And his colleague, U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, was equally blunt: “I don’t know how you can sleep at night. You lost the battle.”

Indeed he did, but it looks like the war is going well. According to a story printed in the Review-Journal, Brown is still on FEMA’s payroll, consulting at what would be an annual rate of $148,000 per year! We cannot imagine what advice he’s giving FEMA, but we sure as hell hope they’re doing the precise opposite.

That’s the sound of a Class-A catfight you hear brewing in Carson City, as Nevada’s first lady, Dema Guinn, takes aim at fellow Republican (and congressional hopeful) Dawn Gibbons, wife of would-be governor Jim Gibbons.

Dema Guinn says if Dawn Gibbons gets elected to Congress, she won’t be able to fulfill the duties of first lady, whatever those are. “Nevadans deserve to have a full-time congressperson represent them back in Washington, D.C., not a jet-lagged congressperson,” Dema Guinn was quoted as saying in the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Ouch, baby. Do you think the first lady knows that every Nevada member of Congress is jet-lagged, since most fly home on the weekends only to turn around and fly back out on Monday? Just ask U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley how fun that schedule is.

“And the people of Nevada also need a full-time first lady,” Dema Guinn continued. If she gets elected to Congress, Dema Guinn added, Dawn Gibbons “could not run the [governor’s] mansion from Washington, D.C.”

We’d suggest that the people of Nevada really don’t care who’s “running the mansion,” but we don’t want to be rude.

The backstory here, as always, is the real story: Jim Gibbons went before the Legislature in 2003 and slammed Gov. Kenny Guinn’s gross-receipts tax plan, a sin for which he hasn’t been forgiven by Nevada’s first family. Kenny Guinn has talked to several individuals about challenging Gibbons in the Republican primary for governor, and is mad as hell at his longtime counselor, Sig Rogich, who’s advising Gibbons on his bid. Now, Dema Guinn is getting into the act, and it looks like she’s got an even sharper knife collection than her husband.

But let’s be real, folks: Assuming Jim Gibbons becomes governor — and we’re not ready to say that’s going to happen yet — and Dawn Gibbons becomes a member of Congress, things in Nevada ought to work just fine. Sure, Dawn Gibbons won’t be around to do the things that first ladies traditionally do, but is that going to shut down the state? Or even be noticed by anybody? It seems to us that suggesting Dawn Gibbons would do a disservice to Nevada by not being first lady — and only first lady — is downright anti-feminist.

But, what the hell do we know? And, it’s a long way until both Jim and Dawn Gibbons face voters in their respective primary races. Until then, it seems, Nevada’s most prominent power couple is going to make life hard for the family Gibbons.

So the head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Ken Tomlinson, has reached the end of his term. He sarcastically greeted the milestone, saying he could stand no more. (Remember this is the guy who hired outside contractors to determine if Bill Moyers was being too liberal.)

His replacement, alas, doesn’t look to be much better. Said Cheryl Halpern, upon taking the reins: “We have a duty to provide the public an explanation for the kind of work we do, and we must honor the principles clearly stated in our charter: to encourage objective and balanced programming.”

Sounds good, right? But what happens when an objective and balanced report would have to conclude that:

• The Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina was woefully inadequate, and people died as a result?

• The Bush administration’s pursuit of tax cuts while at the same time spending billions on hurricane relief in the South and a war in Iraq is fiscally insane, and guaranteed to produce huge deficits that will have to be paid off by our children and grandchildren?

• The Bush administration deliberately leaked the name of a covert CIA operative to punish her husband for speaking out against a claim — made by the president in a speech to Congress and the American people — that was demonstrably false at the time he made it?

• The Bush administration went to war on premises that it knew, or should have known, were untrue? And that administration lies about the premises for war continue, almost to this very day?

• The Halliburton corporation, formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, has received millions in no-bid contracts in Iraq and in hurricane relief efforts?

Do you think the Republicans who now head the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would object to any of those stories as unbalanced or not objective? Yet all are true. And must not “objectivity” yield to “truth” at some point? Or, put another way, isn’t telling these stories the pinnacle of “objectivity” itself, since they are all true?

Interesting points that will not be pondered at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, another government enclave now tainted by Republican control of Washington, D.C. When will it end?

Oh, sorry, folks. We accidentally forgot our mission of being balanced and objective.

Hey, wait a second. That’s not our mission! Our mission is to tell the truth and shame the devil! So to hell with balance and objectivity! We at Various Things & Stuff will content ourselves with a crusade for enlightenment.

Poor Station Casinos. The neighborhood gambling giant just can’t seem to catch a break anywhere in Nevada. First, there was last year’s epic battle over the height of the Red Rock Station. Second, there was the controversy over shutting out critics from a meeting on the planned Station Casino on Durango Drive and the Las Vegas Beltway. And now, there’s the Reno angle.

Station has been working to develop a casino in south Reno, an area not exactly known for the growth of the gambling industry. (That’s thanks, in part, to an Indian casino in Auburn, Calif., that’s managed by Station Casinos and positioned on Interstate 80 to siphon gamblers who might otherwise drive all the way to Reno.)

But Station wants to build in depressed Reno, too, and has found a site for a 55,000-square-foot casino, 496-room hotel, spa, beach and pool area, not to mention nightclubs and restaurants, according to the Review-Journal. All in all, it adds up to something Reno hasn’t seen in a long time: New casino jobs.

Alas, critics have formed groups like Citizens Against Casinos in Neighborhoods and No South Reno Casinos campaign. And they’re lobbying against the project, which has yet to even go before the Reno City Council. (The land where the casino may ultimately be built is not even in city limits; Reno would have to annex the parcel eventually.)

Cynics at this point are searching for the invisible hand of the Culinary Union, Station’s mortal enemy. And there it is! The union is assisting in anti-casino efforts, seeing as how Station is a non-union casino and all.

But aligning with folks who say the new property will attract traffic (surely a good thing for a casino) and crime (an often-made, seldom-proven allegation) may come back to bite organized labor. If casinos cause crime, then shouldn’t they be banned? (Don’t worry, dear readers, the only crime that occurs in casinos is the voluntary, victimless fleecing of the masses, which is perfectly legal under state law.)

Alas, the union can’t deploy the better argument: Station has directly contributed to the decline of Reno thanks to its partnership in the California casino. After all, Station is committing to Reno’s market with a significant investment.

We at Various Things & Stuff have never really had a problem with neighborhood casinos. We frequent the Green Valley Ranch, which isn’t too far from our nondescript industrial building offices somewhere near McCarran International Airport. And we’ll probably drop by the new Red Rock Station when it’s finished, since we hear it’s going to be cool.

We do understand the concerns of people who don’t want casinos in neighborhoods, but look at the evidence: They are packed with customers. If people really didn’t like the locals gambling palaces, they’d be much more effective in voting with their feet and not visiting. Union or not, that simply doesn’t happen. Ergo, people like them, they make money, and they accrue the power and influence that goes along with money. And it will keep happening, so long as the masses keep stopping by.

We at Various Things & Stuff just hate to agree with the Review-Journal’s editorial page, but when they’re right, they’re right. The editors today said it was a “no-brainer” for the Board of Regents of the state university system not to adopt a “cooling off” period that would bar a regent from taking a job at one of the state’s universities for one year after he’s left office.

The operative word, of course, is brain.

Regent Steve Sisolak proposed the one-year cooling-off policy after former Regent Doug Seastrand took at homeland security studies job at UNLV. (Seastrand said he could have stayed on the board, a la Regent Howard Rosenberg, who holds a horribly conflicting job teaching at the University of Nevada, Reno, that nonetheless has received the bizarre blessing of the state Ethics Commission. But instead of pulling a Rosenberg, Seastrand gracefully left to avoid the appearance of a conflict. What a prince.)

There is no way, as Chancellor Jim Rogers noted, that a university president cannot feel pressure to hire a regent who approves (or withholds approval) of a school’s budget. UNLV, conversely, can say Seastrand was the most qualified guy in the universe all it wants, but the question will still be raised, and it should be: Did he use his influence to get the post?

Nevada law on the subject is clear — NRS 281.481(1) prohibits public officers from seeking or accepting any employment that would tend to influence a reasonable person to depart from the faithful and impartial discharge of his public duties. And NRS 281.481(2) bans using your position in government to grant unwarranted privileges for yourself. There’s little doubt that seeking a job from a university when you’re a regent could easily violate both of these laws.

The regents are scheduled to take up Sisolak’s proposal again in December. They should pass it. If they don’t, it’s a clear sign that some of them still want to get a seat in the dining car of the gravy train.

Baptists in Mississippi (and news reports say one out of every four residents is a Baptist) are gearing up to oppose casinos being built on dry land. The fact that casinos exist in Mississippi at all is something of a miracle, although the Baptists would probably ascribe that to a more diabolical source. A compromise with religious interests in the state allowed casinos to be built, provided they were over water. Then, when God got sick of the evils of gambling, he could send a hurricane and … well, you know the rest.

Now, casino companies are wondering if perhaps they might be allowed to build on dry land, to prevent their properties from being forcibly relocated by Mother Nature. And Gov. Haley Barbour has put the matter on a special session agenda for the Mississippi Legislature this week.

We think the Baptists in Mississippi might be in for a rude awakening: Casinos produce revenue for the state — $334.6 million in fiscal year 2005, and $57.4 million thus far in fiscal year 2006. And when any state government comes to rely on that revenue, it’s hard to say no to the people who provide it.

And that’s not even to mention the fact that, if you’re going to have gambling at all, there’s really no practical or moral difference whether you have it over water or over land. Which is why some Baptists think this is a perfect time to get rid of gambling once and for all.

And that leads us to the Various Things & Stuff Trivia Question of the Day: Where in the Bible does it specifically say that Christians can’t gamble? If you know the answer, e-mail us — SSebelius@lvcitylife.com — and let us know. One entry per e-mail address please!

In the wake of Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins’ decision to bow out of the race for governor, everybody seems to be singing from the same hymnal: Perkins could have won the primary, but would have had difficulty in the general, where he would likely have faced U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons. (And by “everybody,” we mean Perkins himself, along with R&R Partners chief Billy Vassiliadis, who repeated the mantra on Face to Face with Jon Ralston on Thursday.

Pardon us, but we disagree. In fact, there’s a very good chance Perkins could have come in dead last in a three-way Democratic primary with state Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus and Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson.

First, polls — all polls, those conducted by newspapers, candidates and special interests — found Perkins’ name identification to be almost non-existent, especially in the rural parts of the state. For a man who’s been speaker (or co-speaker) for five years, it was a surprising showing.

Second, Titus (by virtue of her position leading Senate Democrats) had a higher profile than the speaker, and ran better against Gibbons in head-to-head matchups. Polls confirmed this.

Third, Perkins is simply not a passionate campaigner. Titus has a talent for firing up a crowd of Democratic activists and a way of instantly connecting with her audience that’s impressive. Perkins does not. (Case in point: When U.S. Sen. John Kerry came to the Thomas & Mack center last year during his presidential bid, Titus’ speech got one of the loudest ovations of the afternoon; Perkins, by contrast, read a tepid address that got a concomitantly tepid response.)

That’s not to say, of course, that Perkins doesn’t have passion. He does. Once you get to know him away from microphones, cameras and tape recorders, you’ll find he’s a man of principle who genuinely wants to do good things for Nevada. But voters, by and large, will never get to see him away from microphones, cameras and tape recorders, and thus they’d have no way of knowing that.

Titus, by contrast, connects with her audience almost immediately, a talent that’s sure to help her when she goes up against the more reserved Gibson in the primary.

Gibson, for his part, is smart and canny, his unfortunate decisions to represent Nevada Power (against a majority of Las Vegans, who voted to indicate the power company should be taken over by the water authority) and the Las Vegas Monorail notwithstanding. When a group of Henderson leaders showed up at the Review-Journal once to extol the virtues of the Henderson State College, Gibson was the only one who could answer questions with anything more than slogans.

The conventional wisdom was that Gibson and Perkins would have split the conservative Democrat vote and left Titus with party activists; that’s probably true. But Gibson would not have had to endure the negative publicity that came from allegations of double-dipping, a history of legislative special sessions (many of which were not Perkins’ fault) and the disaffection of organized labor that came out of the last session. While Perkins would have had the benefit of a campaign run by veteran Sean Sinclair, assisted by Vassiliadis and fellow R&R Partner Pete Ernaut, it would have been a struggle with Gibson for Second Place.

At least, that’s how we see it.

And speaking of conventional wisdom and post-Perkins analysis, what’s all this talk about “party leaders” supporting Gibson? Vassiliadis said so on Face to Face and political science professor Erik Herkiz of UNR said the same thing in the Las Vegas Sun.

Why would they not get behind Titus, who’s running stronger in the polls than Gibson and who definitely has the fire in the belly to win (not to mention getting the backing of EMILY’s List this week, too)?

Oh, that’s right. These are leaders of the Democratic Party in Nevada. For them, winning is a little like walking on the moon: They’ve seen it on TV, but it still seems like a strange and faraway concept that’s just too hard to figure out.

So the House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday that allows churches and faith-based providers in the federal Head Start program to hire only those people who subscribe to their religion.

Lay aside for a moment that we think no federal funds (or state or local funds, for that matter) should ever flow to a church — it’s inevitable that federal strings will corrupt otherwise worthy programs, and churches should rely exclusively on the voluntary donations of their parishioners for support. It also comes awfully close to the line of government-established religious programs, which is barred by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

What the House did was explicitly condone religion-based discrimination in employment paid for by taxpayers. “Congress should not be in the business of supporting state-sponsored discrimination,” said U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, the Florida Democrat.

Republicans will argue that Catholic churches shouldn’t be forced to hire non-Catholics, and that’s absolutely true. But its the Republicans that have created the problem in the first place, by allowing Catholic churches to receive federal funds. Once they do that, the nonsectarian umbrella of government covers the use of those funds, and non-discrimination laws ought to apply.

See? Told you there was good reason to keep churches from taking government money.

If religious groups aren’t smart enough to see that taking federal money is a bad idea, they should be forced to live with the consequences of that decision, which is to be forced to throw their hiring open to everyone, and comply with federal rules as to how the money is spent. That’s how it works in a country with an explicitly non-sectarian government.

By the way, Republican U.S. Reps. Jim Gibbons and Jon Porter voted to allow groups to take the money but still discriminate in hiring, while Democrat U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley voted against the idea.

U.S. Sen. John Ensign says he’d prefer the federal government made an across-the-board 5 percent cut in spending (except for defense and homeland security, of course) to help in Hurricane Katrina relief. But if that’s not enough, he says abandoning tax cuts should still be an option.

And if Ensign says he’s in favor of spiking tax cuts, you know things have got to be bad. (He made his remarks at a news conference in which U.S. Sen. John McCain predicted relief efforts could push the budget deficit to $500 billion.

Maybe somebody ought to tell President Bush?

So the damn activist judges on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — taking a break from ruling the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional, have ruled power lobbyist Harvey Whittemore and liquor distributor Larry Ruvo can build a 300-foot-long floating pier (with up to four boat lifts!) in front of property they own in Glenbrook at Lake Tahoe.

The pier has been controversial since 1999, when Whittemore tried to juice in permission to build the pier — despite opposition from a homeowners association and others — into a bill being considered by the Nevada Legislature. It must be nice, we thought at the time, to be part of a group so rich and so elite that whatever obstacles you encounter in your life can be erased by getting the Legislature to dance for you.

And the dancing continued, in the courts, for years. The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency even came up with a plan this year to allow lots of new piers to be built on the lake, over the next 20 years, provided you’ve got $100,000 for a permit. (Whittemore and Ruvo spend that on their kept men and women in the Legislature, so why not a pretty pier?)

But now it looks like the system has spoken, and Harvey and his friend Larry get their own pier. They’ve contended they don’t have access to the community pier, so this will allow them to avoid mixing with the other millionaire property owners when spending weekends in Lake Tahoe, especially during the session, lifting glasses of Chardonnay and toasting the good life, as lawmakers bring them peeled grapes, wheels of cheese and perhaps a bit of caviar.

Then, the lawmakers can dance.