Sometimes, news is too small to fit into a regular-size blog. That’s when we toss it in the Blog-Aid, and mix it into delicious Quick Hits! Here we go!

• Hillary Clinton was on Wal-Mart’s board, starting 21 years ago and ending 15 years ago. So where does the Review-Journal run the story? On the front page, of course! Man, we can’t wait until the R-J finds out about Whitewater! Three-part series anyone? And those cattle futures? That’s a goddamn special section.
  
• So, after a story in which the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce was allowed to trash the teachers union’s gambling tax proposal, another in which Las Vegas Sands Inc. President Bill Weider got to toss up his alternative (use room tax; gut the LVCVA) and the running — verbatim! — of Weidner’s anti-LVCVA that first appeared on an obscure right-wing website, the teachers proposed tax is still favored by 62 percent of voters.
  
• But what’s that? A dip in support? From 76 percent to 62 percent? Why, the anti-tax campaign running in the R-J is working! Keep it up! There’s less than a year to go!
  
• You’ve got to hand it to those Republicans: When they don’t like how an intelligence assessment comes out, they investigate the people who wrote it, and badger them until it comes out the way they want. Or, John Ensign wants to be the new Dick Cheney.
  
• Oh, by the way, Bush knew in August that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program, but still made belligerent comments in October about Iran’s nuclear program leading to World War III. In short, the president is lying again.
  
• The National Intelligence Assessment is not "…very credible because it’s a 180-degree turn in two years based on new discoveries. I don’t see any strong reason why in two years they won’t reverse themselves." — Norman Podhoretz, commentator and warmonger. Well, gee, Norm, maybe in two years we won’t have a president who’s batshit crazy for war with Iran?
  
• "I think it’s a good advertisement to be known as a low-tax state that tries to keep taxes low for businesses and citizens. I think it’s a mistake to go away from that." — Weidner, on a proposal to impose a broad-based business tax. (We assume he’s fine with Nevada’s other advertisements: Low per-pupil education spending, high rates of divorce, bankruptcy, foreclosure, suicide, high-school dropouts, college dropouts, etc. Yeah, that’s a great advertisement for Nevada. Hey, Weidner should really be in charge of the Nevada Development Authority…)
  
• Hey, do you think it might be a good idea to set up some rules for county slush funds? Yeah, that might be a good idea. Another reform brought to you by the reporting in the Las Vegas Sun.
• Shenanigans, perpetuated by Republic Services? The hell you say.
  

Poor Nevada Supreme Court Justice Nancy Saitta: According to Jane Ann Morrison’s column in the Review-Journal today, she’s about to be slammed by a former law clerk in an article that alleges Saitta’s unqualified for the high court’s bench.

The thrust of the article is that judges should be appointed to avoid situations where unqualified people manage to get themselves elected. And that’s a fine and dandy reason, with which we happen to be in full agreement.

But there’s one little thing. See, the woman that Saitta replaced, ex-Justice Nancy Becker, was allegedly tossed out of office "…on the basis of a single, unpopular decision," Morrison writes, adding that her ruling in a second, eminent domain case didn’t help, either.

What was that decision? Guinn v. Legislature, circa 2003, likely one of the most notorious and ill-considered rulings of any court in any country in recorded history. But more on that in a second.

Now, Morrison blames the R-J’s editorial page for leading a crusade against Becker, which it did, and puts Becker’s defeat up to the resulting negative publicity. OK, fine. But there’s a simple, underlying truth that Morrison ignores, and she’s certainly not alone. And that’s this: Becker’s concurrence in that decision was objectively, legally wrong, and in and of itself proved that Becker was no longer fit to serve on the state’s high court.

(And let’s not forget that it wasn’t just the R-J’s editorial page. We at Various Things & Stuff also condemned that decision, in terms just as strong — if not stronger — than the R-J. If left (us) and right (R-J) agree on this, might there not be something to our argument?)

And that argument is this: Becker and her colleagues were asked to reconcile a dilemma: The state constitution required that schools be funded by the Legislature, but a more recent amendment required that a two-thirds majority is required to raise taxes, which is what needed to be done in 2003 to fund the schools budget. Only thing: The Legislature couldn’t muster two-thirds in the Assembly.

What to do? Well, we’ve analyzed the decision in great detail elsewhere, so we won’t belabor the point. But what Becker did was simply unacceptable: She voted to ignore the two-thirds provision, and let the Legislature raise taxes with a simple majority. She didn’t vote to strike down the two-thirds provision (difficult, since it was a part of the constitution), or to decide it was legally flawed. She voted to ignore it, and thus ignore the will of the voters who twice approved it at the ballot box. (Oh, and later, when nobody was looking, she and her colleagues on the court reversed Guinn v. Legislature in a cowardly but nonetheless telling admission that they were flat-assed wrong.)

As a result, the voters decided Becker was not qualified to serve. And as far as we’re concerned, they were right in that decision.

We don’t know if Saitta will do any better on the high court, but if nothing else comes out of the drama, this will: If your job is to interpret the constitution and you choose instead to ignore it, you’re at peril of losing your job. And while we still support the appointing of judges, this is one of the few examples of where electing them might serve the public interest better.

Ironic, then, that Morrison would choose this case to argue for appointment over election. But like we said: Don’t blame her. Many other people — even smart people, like law professors — also just don’t understand the import of Guinn v. Legislature and its reversal.

Now, we can forgive the rhetorical excesses of Ann Romney, wife of Mitt Romney, who came out of a fundraiser gushing about how people rapturously compared her husband’s speech on God and politics to the Gettysburg Address and were moved to tears. After all, she’s in line to become first lady of the United States, and pick a sweet china pattern at taxpayer expense.

So, Stan, he may be the perfect candidate in your mind, but out here, in this place we call reality, there’s a long list of candidates who qualify as more "perfect" than one Mitt Romney.

To begin with, Steve Hill is the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce’s government affairs committee chairman, or as we know it, the dude who recommends the really bad policies that happen to inure to the benefit of local (big) businesses.

He was quoted in one of several Review-Journal stories this weekend, all of which were aimed at fighting the Nevada State Education Association’s initiative to raise the top tier of gross gambling tax to 9.75 percent.

First, objected Hill, it’s not accurate to say that Nevada businesses pay nothing in taxes. They do pay property, sales and payroll taxes, just to name a few.

But nobody ever said non-gambling businesses paid nothing. That’s what they call a "straw man." The advocates of a broad-based business tax, including MGM Mirage Chairman Terry Lanni, have said that Nevada’s non-gambling businesses pay nothing on their gross revenues. That’s entirely different, as Hill well knows.

But while we’re on the subject, let’s just take a second to note that every tax paid by Nevada businesses is also paid by casinos, and the gambling halls usually pay more. Strip property, for example, is the most valuable in town, so casinos pony up big time in property taxes. They buy materials, supplies and personal property at a rate greater than most small businesses (allegedly the vast majority of the chamber’s membership, by the way). And their payroll taxes are greater because their workforce is larger.

Now, back to gross revenues. Companies like Hill’s Silver State Materials Corp. — a concrete contractor — pay nothing on their gross revenue. But casinos do. And they have. For decades. Is that fair? Is that right?

Before anybody at the R-J asked, however, Hill was using another tired rhetorical device: The bait and switch. Screeched Hill: Look at all these highly paid public employees! That’s money down the drain!

Well, what he actually said was this: "The benefits were paying for government employees are substantially more expensive than we can find in the private sector and we don’t think that’s right. We think there are quite a few different ways the system can be reformed before we just add money to it."

And there you have it, folks: Steve Hill hates cops, nurses, firefighters, building inspectors, child social service workers and the nice people who change the street lights when they burn out. And his solution to the budget problem? Fuck them over.

See, the government made a deal with everybody who works for Metro, for UMC, for the Clark County Fire Department, for the city of Las Vegas, and all the rest: You come to work for us, and we’ll pay you the wages and benefits that we and your union agree upon. Do a good job, and we promise we’ll do right by you, by providing a good salary, good health care, and good retirement. Every single person who went to work for a local government agreed. (And we doubt any of them lives in a house as nice as Hill’s, by the way.)

But now Hill wants the government to break that promise, and scale back those benefits, just because he and the rest of his private-sector buddies are far, far too cheap to provide anything close. So if the private sector takes advantage of workers to the greatest extent possible (most of whom are not represented by unions, by the way) why shouldn’t the government do the same?

The level of hatred and disrespect Hill has for his fellow humans is galling. It’s a good thing that those workers are so professional, they’ll ignore his patronizing antipathy the next time he needs a cop, a firefighter, or maybe a deputy district attorney to help him collect a bad debt.

But since he hates the public sector so much, why don’t we help him save the state money by ensuring that Silver State Materials Corp. isn’t allowed to bid on any public projects whatsoever from now on, OK? We wouldn’t want a guilty conscience over contributing to the budget deficit keeping him up at night.

Oh, wait…