And some more tasty, delightful quick hits (now with fewer calories!)

• The Review-Journal seems interested in the fact that taxpayers will continue to pay outgoing UNLV President Carol Harter’s $234,600 base salary through the end of her contract, which is in June 2008.

Well, whose fault is that? It’s not like Harter wanted to quit. She was forced out, by one Chancellor Jim Rogers. So if anybody is looking to blame somebody for the fact that we’ll soon be paying two UNLV presidential salaries, talk to the chancellor.

As for Harter, she’ll be earning the cash, raising money for UNLV at the university’s foundation. Given that Harter could have insisted on receiving the full value of her contract and walking away, instead of continuing her efforts to raise $500 million for the school, we’d say taxpayers caught a break.

• Enron is “one of the finest free-market institutions the world has ever seen.” That’s what attorney Michael Ramsey said while defending former Enron chief Ken Lay from charges he looted the company, lied to investors and caused a massive bankruptcy.

This Ramsey is a good lawyer, assuming he said that to the jury with a straight face. Then again, Enron does represent the pinnacle of a free market unfettered by government regulation, one in which greed and lies end up costing investors and workers lots of money.

But regulations are bad, right?

• Speaking of crony capitalism, we couldn’t help but notice that Exxon set an all-time global record for profits, posting $36.13 billion for 2005. And the company’s total revenue for 2005, a tidy $371 billion, eclipsed the entire gross domestic product of Saudi Arabia, which could only muster a meager $340.5 billion.

Now, we’re not going to go on a socialist tear here and endorse Democratic calls for a windfall profits tax, or more requirements to invest in clean energy. Let’s leave that for another day, and pose a simple question: How in the world could any sane person justify tax breaks for a company that made this much money? Surely there are more pressing places to spend tax money, rather than throwing it on top of a huge pile of greenbacks in Exxon’s vault? And yet, House Republicans think $36 billion simply isn’t enough.

“I would hope the capitalist system would promote and applaud the hard work of companies that have been smart and lucky to achieve good earnings for shareholders,” said Tina Vidal, an analyst for Standard & Poor’s.

Make you a deal, Tina: We’ll applaud your hard work and smarts if you truly embrace a capitalist system, one in which the oil industry gets no help from the government in any form, including tax breaks or incentives. Deal?

• And finally today, we’re not going to comment upon President George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech, mostly because we didn’t get a chance to see it. (It’s TiVo’d, so we’ll have that joy later this week.) For a good analysis, however, check out Las Vegas Gleaner.

But we will comment upon one thing: The fact that Cindy Sheehan, mother of a solider killed in Iraq, was removed from the House chamber before the speech. She’d come at the invitation of a California congresswoman, and had worn a T-shirt protesting the war. Capital Police yanked her for violating a rule that prohibits any kind of demonstration in the House chambers.

So, in the chambers of the House of Representatives of the United States, the very temple of democracy, the First Amendment doesn’t apply?

Actually, that’s not true. It does apply, but selectively. Because by refusing to allow a woman who, as Abraham Lincoln once wrote, laid so noble a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom, to even wear a T-shirt stating her opposition to war, there was a demonstration on the House floor, one the cops did nothing to quell.

It was a demonstration of utter cowardice.

We at Various Things & Stuff are totally impressed with the restraint and consensus-building skills of new Clark County School District Superintendent Walt Rulffes. Instead of telling the uppity Citizens for a Better Nevada to — for lack of a better phrase — fuck off, he’s embraced the group that worked like demons to see that he didn’t get the job.

Citizens for a Better Nevada Executive Director Maureen Peckman has announced that her group will be spinning off an independent body dubbed the “Community Alliance for the Reform of Education, or CARE. And CARE’s job will be to watch over Rulffes shoulder to ensure that he’s doing what the Citizens for a Better Nevada think is right, i.e., decentralizing the school district.

“His [Rulffes] tenure needs to be committed to total reform,” Peckman said, in the Review-Journal. “The trustees gave him a year-and-a-half contract because they want reform, not because they want to continue with the status quo.”

And as much as Peckman and her group want to be the school board, without the bother of elections, we feel compelled to say that maintaining the status quo was precisely why the board picked Rulffes for the job. He’s a trusted hand at running the district’s finances — and it has a $3.5 billion bond issue coming up. And he knows how to manage the district, which will be helpful in the upcoming 2007 Legislature. Both were the main reasons given for the unanimous vote to give Rulffes the job.

Oh, and the fact that the Citizens for a Better Nevada totally screwed the pooch when it came to promoting its own handpicked candidate — New York City Schools’ Eric Nadelstern — who dropped out before the final vote. The total lack of alternative candidates was another good reason the school board picked Rulffes.

But besides the fact that Peckman’s wrong in her assessment, what about the arrogance displayed in it? The person who led the opposition to Rulffes getting the job is now going to tell Rulffes how to do the job? How does that work?

Don’t get us wrong: The Clark County School District does need reform, and it needs reform badly. Smaller schools, smaller classes, more autonomy and freedom from burdensome regulations are all good starts. (This week’s CityLife, on newsstands Thursday, details some of the bureaucratic snafus that plague special education.) But even if the Citizens for a Better Nevada have motives pure as driven snow — and we’ll stipulate to the fact that they do, for purposes of this discussion — the way the group has handled the superintendent search and its fallout has drained it of credibility. Humility, not heavy-handedness, should be the hallmark here.

Or should it? After all, Rulffes has said he’ll work with CARE, like he would with any other group. He’s apparently drawing no lines in the sand, which means he’s in it for the right reasons. We’ll say this for the man: He’s got his ego in check, and that’s a good place from which to proceed.

If it were us, we’d be telling the Citizens for a Better Nevada, and all related organizations, to speak with our own grassroots group, the Foundation for Undertaking Cooperation from Kindergarten Onward to Future Frontiers. Don’t worry; they’d get the message.

A couple of other quotables, by the way, show that haughtiness isn’t limited to Peckman. Bill Martin president of Nevada State Bank and a member of the Citizens for a Better Nevada, had this to say: “There are people that will always look for a hidden agenda rather than saying isn’t it nice that some people would spend their money and time to benefit the community.”

Perhaps. Mr. Martin, we cynics look for a hidden agenda because we so often find one. And we’re totally supportive of people spending time and money to benefit the community. We just question spending time and money to try to substitute your judgment for that of the school board. The difference? You may have money, but the school board was elected by the people of the county of Clark, and are thus imbued with the authority that belongs only to the people. If you want a piece of that, you’ve got to put your name on the ballot and get the support of a majority for your views.

Then there was university Chancellor Jim Rogers, who uncharacteristically backed off his remark that he’d support a political challenger to school board member Sheila Moulton, who supported Rulffes over Nadelstern. “The past is the past, and the door is shut. Let’s move on,” Rogers said.

Dude, “the past” was, like, last week!