According to the Review-Journal’s Omar Sofradzija, who keeps track of these things, the Las Vegas Monorail is in financial dire straits. (Congratulations, by the way, to Sofradzija, who is leaving the R-J soon to become the editorial adviser for The State News at Michigan State University.)

It seems that poor income figures have caused Fitch Ratings to downgrade the monorail’s stock even further into "junk" status, and to predict that default on the $650 million in tax-exempt bonds that built the train "appears probable." Cash reserves, Fitch predicts, will only last until 2010.

Of course, those naysayers at Fitch forget that the monorail did make a lot of money for founders Cam Walker and the late Bob Broadbent, and their families. And it did provide a booming job program for them and fellow members of their church, including former monorail president (and Henderson Mayor) Jim Gibson. So it wasn’t a total failure.

Anyway, the monorail has been plagued with problems from the start, including design flaws that kept the train hobbled for months. It’s never, ever even approached the ridership figure of 50,000 average riders per day that Broadbent promised, and it’s never come close to making enough money to break even. In fact, even the monorail’s critics were too optimistic about ridership numbers.

Despite constant, repeated promises of success that was just around the corner with new "marketing" plans, the monorail has seen only a slight uptick in riders in recent months. (The train now only reports its ridership quarterly, no doubt to avoid embarrassing headlines around the first of each month.)

So what happens now? The monorail has plans (blessed by the Clark County Commission, which was led in the action by Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, a friend and fellow church member of Broadbent’s) to expand to McCarran International Airport. But with bonds that are worthless, new debt will be terribly expensive. What’s going to happen?

We believe we have seen the future, in the form of a recently-documented change in monorail policy. You see, while the monorail said it would not again resort to using state-sponsored, tax-exempt bonds, it appears officials are backing off that stance.

Our prediction: The monorail will once again ask the state to bail it out of a bind, and hand over tax-exempt bonds. And the state will probably say yes.

This is, of course, a mistake. The monorail isn’t going to help in any significant way in getting people around, even if it is extended to McCarran. First, how will it get luggage to and fro? Second, since it only goes to one side of the Strip, it’s virtually useless to people staying at Mandalay Bay, Bellagio, Caesars Palace, The Mirage, Treasure Island, or even Donald Trump’s new joint.

Plus, even if you are staying at a monorail-serviced hotel, check-in is pretty far from the monorail station, as the Las Vegas Sun once demonstrated.

Third, since Las Vegas already has transportation to and from the airport (locally, they’re called "taxis," "buses," "limos," "hotel shuttles," "rental cars" or "my friend who lives in Vegas will pick us up!") do we really need the monorail?

No, for this train to be totally useful, it would have to make a circuit all around the Strip (both sides), stop at almost every single hotel, run to the airport, and have larger cars (to accommodate luggage) or a concierge system that would route luggage directly to hotels. To all hotels.

Of course, serving as a mass transit system was never what the monorail was really designed to do. It was designed to move passengers among a small number of hotels, some a considerable distance from the well-traveled Strip, and to make its officers wealthy men. It’s accomplished only half of that mission, thanks in part to the contractors that those wealthy men selected to do the job, who initially failed.

The monorail has survived thus far on juice. It was juice that got the idea going in the first place. It was juice that got the state to agree to issue tax-free bonds, without which the monorail could never have been built. It was juice that got the state and the county to exempt the monorail from taxes (it’s considered a "charity" for doing mass transit work that the government should be doing; alas, the government is doing that work, which is what helps keep monorail ridership low). It was juice that beat back questions about revoking the monorail’s tax-exempt status. It was juice that got pro-monorail people installed in key government transportation jobs at just the right times to help the train. And it will be juice that the train tries to use to expand.

We shouldn’t let it. If the monorail — which calls itself a "privately financed" line — wants to expand, it should do so with private debt, assuming it could get investors to pony up the cash. But it should not be allowed to get a single dime more than its already gotten under the auspices of the state or any other government.

The juice has got to stop flowing sometime. Right now seems a pretty good time, don’t you think?

Editor’s note: We were all set to blog on Tuesday, readers, when a technological glitch that we call "this shitty network our IT department installed" crapped out on us. As a result, we’ve had to go back and add to or expand our post, based on recent developments, to bring you the most up-to-date blogification possible. Here we go!

» We can’t help but laugh at the way developments in the Dennis Montgomery-Warren Trepp case, the one that has direct implications for our very own Gov. Jim Gibbons, have been treated in the local press. (Recall that in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Reno, Montgomery claims that Trepp bribed Gibbons with cash, casino chips and a nice Caribbean cruise.)

Well, on Tuesday, the Review-Journal reported that Montgomery’s lawyers — Michael Flynn and Carla DiMare — are seeking to withdraw from the case. Their cited reasons: Montgomery hasn’t paid them, and he "engaged in conduct that has made continued representation unreasonably difficult."

Of course, the R-J immediately noted that an expert testifying for Trepp has claimed that Montgomery faked an e-mail between Trepp and a subordinate that appears to indicate an attempt to bribe Gibbons. Could that be the conduct that Mongomery’s attorneys were referring to in their brief?

Who the hell knows? It may just as reasonably be argued that his "conduct" involved not signing checks to pay them, which makes prosecuting a case difficult, as most attorneys will tell you. But a little thing like Occam’s Razor wasn’t enough to prevent the R-J from quoting Gibbons spokeswoman Melissa Subbotin questioning Montgomery’s credibility.

"We have doubted Dennis Montgomery’s credibility since Day 1. Now it would seem that even his own lawyers share those same doubts," Subbotin said. Actually, that’s far from proven, but what do you expect her to say?

The R-J even got its own white-collar crime expert, Douglas McNabb, to weigh in, saying (quite irresponsibly, might we add) "he suspected" that the allegedly faked e-mail might have played a role in Flynn and DiMare’s desire to get out of the case.

So, let’s do the tally. You’ve got a computer expert hired and paid by Trepp saying Montgomery’s a liar. You’ve got a spokeswoman paid by Gibbons saying he’s a liar. And you’ve got a legal expert two time zones away saying "he suspects" something might be up.

What do all these people have in common? They don’t know fuck-all about why the attorneys really quit. But that didn’t stop them from speaking, or the R-J from writing, what they think they know, which just happens to put Gibbons in a very positive light.

Ditto for today’s R-J, in which Gibbons is allowed to make all sorts of self-serving statements in his own defense.

"I know that the truth is going to ultimately come out, and it appears as if it is starting to come out," said Gibbons.

And again: "Gibbons [who has a law degree] said the law requires that if an attorney has information about the conduct of a client that makes it impossible to represent the client, then the attorney must withdraw.

"Asked if he knew what conduct might be at issue, Gibbons said he did not.

"’I'm not going to speculate,’ he said. ‘I think that is up to Mr. Montgomery and his attorneys.’"

So, here we have the governor admitting his ignorance, and giving the famous "I’m not going to speculate" line, when clearly that is precisely what he’s doing. And the R-J is letting him get away with it.

Thank God that we have other newspapers in Nevada. And therein, we find out a lot of interesting things.

For example, the Reno Gazette-Journal actually talked to Flynn. He didn’t go into details, except to say the R-J was wrong. He said the R-J’s Tuesday story was "woefully inaccurate and jumped to the wrong conclusion," and he denied that the allegations of the fake e-mail had anything to do with him leaving.

And then there’s the Las Vegas Sun. That newspaper reported today that Montgomery had hired Washington, D.C. lawyer Robert Bennett (brother of frequent Las Vegas gambler Bill Bennett) to represent him.

Now, if we were to follow the R-J’s logic, we’d have to conclude that the allegations that Montgomery faked the e-mail were false, otherwise Montgomery would never have been able to hire such a respected counselor to prosecute his lawsuit. But if we were to follow the R-J’s logic, we’d also run the risk of being — what’s that phrase? — woefully inaccurate and jumping to the wrong conclusion.

So again, let’s invoke Occam and his razor: Bennett took the case because he’s a lawyer, and that’s what lawyers do. There’s nothing more extravagant, or sinister, to it than that.

Gibbons is right about one thing: The truth will eventually come out. Whether that is good for him or not remains to be seen. But what certainly is good for him is the wild speculation that R-J editors somehow don’t mind putting in prominent places in their newspaper.

And there are more Quick Hits, in which we promise nothing woefully inaccurate or based on a conclusion that was jumped to without adequate evidence. Here we go!

» Ouch, baby! We think poor Wolf Blitzer is still smarting from this live TV harangue delivered by SiCKO and Fahrenheit 911 filmmaker Michael Moore. Sure, it was a little bombastic, and perhaps a little over the top. (Poor Blitzer could barely argue back, and the defenses he did mount were lame.) But no matter what else, Moore’s central question deserves to be asked: Where are the journalists who will ask the hard questions and demand accurate answers from the administration?

» People "likely" hate Erin Kenny more than any other corrupt official, columnist learns. We remember saying that back in the day.

» Speaking of Kenny, we don’t usually agree with R-J editorials. But that newspaper’s take on the Kenny sentencing (now postponed until Friday, according to the U.S. attorney’s office) is dead on.

» On Monday, the Las Vegas Sun ran an article that said management at MGM Mirage doesn’t really like Culinary Union Local 226 Secretary-Treasurer D. Taylor. On Tuesday, the paper ran another article that revealed workers really like D. Taylor. Told you he was doing something right.

» It’s entirely possible (and, we believe, probable) that attorney Dominic Gentile is right and that Erin Kenny is making up her "memory loss" as a way to worm around her past misdeeds. But even so, it’s also entirely possible that developer Don Davidson bribed her to do stuff. In other words, they’re not mutually exclusive: Kenny could be a liar who is telling the truth about Davidson being a bribe profferer. Think the jury will figure that one out?

» Yes, when we think Internet cool and progressive media and stuff, we totally think … Sig Rogich! Seriously, isn’t his candidate for president — Arizona U.S. Sen. John McCain — like, 112 years old or something? And yelling at kids at this moment to get off of his lawn?