''We're number none!!!''

Emotionally exhausted and grizzled as all get-out, Green Bay Packers quarterback and future Hall of Famer Brett Favre finally retired this week after 17 years in the NFL. Hyper-sentimental retirement speeches have always been big in professional sports, but there’s still such beautiful paradox in the fact that a man can climb to his feet 430 times (for real) after being laid out by fast, feral defensive backs — then, with the 431st barreling down on him, stand his ground long enough to squint through the blood in his eyes and place a ball just over a moving receiver’s shoulder from 60 yards away, and then — THEN — conduct a press conference in a tremulous murmur with tear-streaked cheeks when it all has to come to an end.

Anyway, the all-American media darling really was a blast to watch, more because of his dreadfully high interception frequency than in spite of it — after all, rash decisions always humanize the inhumanly talented.

Oh, and he was on the throwing-end of this gloriously improbable moment from the 2000 season…

A couple of months ago, we reported on the rising number of auto loan defaults and what those numbers mean for the economy. Turned out auto loan defaults were at a six-year high. This trend seems to be ramping up.

Now comes word that those who have paid off their cars are holding onto them longer, presumably because of fears of a recession.

For those sub-prime customers who do venture out for a new set of wheels, local and state markets are ripe for all sorts of dealer fraud and auto-loan fraud. Check the March 13 edition of CityLife for more on how to protect yourself from getting taken on the car lot.

First look at this:

I'm always watching.

Now, face your deepest fears.

Pedal-philes

Playwright and automobile hater Ernest Hemmings (of Test Market Theatre) invites everyone to “subvert the dominant paradigm” by joining him for the first monthly Pedal-phile bicycle pub crawl on Saturday, March 8.

Jump on your Schwinn and cruise over to ground zero, downtown’s The Arts Factory (107 East Charleston Blvd.) at 7 p.m. The drinking route will include Beauty Bar, Downtown Cocktail Room, Dino’s and Snick’s Place.

The legal team here at Various Things & Stuff has been working overtime on analyzing that 36-page ethics complaint filed this week against state Sen. Warren Hardy. (Read it for yourself on my colleague Jon Ralston’s blog.)

The first thing we can say is this: If you didn’t already know the law firm that compiled the complaint worked for various unions, you’d be able to tell quickly from the text. We learn that union contractors pay much better wages than the non-union shops represented by the Associated Builders and Contractors of Las Vegas, the trade group of which Hardy is president. We learn that those shops have better safety records than their non-union counterparts. And we learn that the ABC really dislikes their union counterparts.

But even if you were to acknowledge that the union has a deep bias against the ABC and, thus, Hardy, it’s impossible to say the complaint doesn’t have some merits. In fact, it appears there’s plenty of smoke with the fire.

We’ve said for years that people such as Hardy — who serve as lawmakers and heads of organizations that lobby the Legislature — are walking conflicts of interest. And we’ve said it when the lawmaker in question is the head of a union, too. (Follow that link for our trenchant legal analysis of why we think that the mere accepting of such a job during one’s legislative branch service is illegal.)

With Hardy, it’s a bit different. He was the president of ABC before he became a state senator. His constituents knew about his full-time job, and its inherent conflicts, and elected him anyway. (They’ve also re-elected him.)

But we’re willing to bet they elected him with the expectation that he’d behave ethically and avoid actual conflicts; if this complaint is proof, he’s failed to do that.

We won’t recite all the allegations — the link above will allow you to do that for yourself. But two or three of them did stand out to us. Here’s why:

• Senate Bill 509 (2007 Legislature). Hardy voted for this bill that would have expanded Nevada law regarding prevailing wage agreements, in which unions and contractor agree to certain pay and promise to avoid work stoppages. The prevailing wage amendment was offered by a union representative, and Hardy argued against it, only once disclosing that his organization is dedicated to fighting prevailing wages. In fact, his vote to not concur with the union-offered amendment broke a tie in the Senate’s Government Affairs Committee.
• That vote — which the ABC later bragged about — affected the material interests of the organization that pays Hardy’s full-time salary. It’s a direct conflict, one that should have kept him from voting on the bill at all, in our view.
• Senate Bill 279 (2007 Legislature). This bill would have allowed the state Contractor’s Board to collect and release information lodged against contractors. It was supported by the board, but opposed by the ABC and Hardy, who argued releasing the information might harm contractors. (I.e. the companies that pay his full-time salary,) Hardy made the motion that says the board could collect — but not release — complaint information.
• In this instance, Hardy seems to have sided with his industry against the interests of the public in determining if a contractor has a large number of complaints. The public can still find out about cases that have resulted in discipline, but not those still pending or those that were resolved without discipline. Again, it’s a direct conflict that should have spurred Hardy to abstain.
• Senate Bill 467 (2005 Legislature). This bill — to exempt public works projects from prevailing wage laws when they cost less than $250,000 instead of the existing limit of $100,000, was introduced by the ABC, and Hardy admitted he worked on it in his private capacity. Yet he also voted on it when it came before his committee. Again, a direct conflict.

And let’s not forget that it was Hardy who suggested to Gov. Jim Gibbons that prevailing wage laws be suspended on state projects, long a goal of ABC. We questioned at the time whether Hardy had improperly used his office to gain access to the governor, since it’s impossible to separate his job as a state senator from his job as the president of a trade organization.

The upshot? Lawmakers who serve two masters — including Hardy and state Sen. Mark Amodei, who solicited and later received the job of president of the Nevada Mining Association, yet unbelievably continues to serve in office — are guaranteed to face trouble. If they are scrupulous to avoid conflicts and abstain whenever a bill affecting their interests comes up, they deny their constituents a voice on important matters. If they proceed to vote, they risk breaking ethics laws. This is one good reason why such people shouldn’t serve at all, no matter who their outside master is. (We’d oppose, for example, the executive director of the Nevada Press Association getting elected to the Legislature, even though that person would be likely to advance the interests of media organizations like ours.)

And, finally, let’s do away with the canard that it’s OK to vote when your vote, while a conflict, does not affect you to any greater or lesser degree than anyone else similarly situated in a particular class. (State Sen. Dina Titus, for example, can vote on a budget that funds raises for university professors, even though she is one, since all university professors will get the same raise as she does.)

It’s poppycock, since public employees are barred from service under our reading of the state Constitution’s separation of powers clause. Thus, an analysis of whether such votes constitute a conflict is unnecessary, since they’re never supposed to happen in the first place.

But in the instant case of Hardy, it’s clear that votes that tend to advance the interests of members of the ABC, the group that pays his full-time salary, are conflicts. Sure, they may affect all ABC members (or even all non-union contractors) equally. But the fact is, many of those contractors are members of a group that pays Hardy a salary far in excess of his legislative pay. It’s a direct conflict, little different than a bribe. It not only tends to decrease the public’s confidence in government, it also appears to be a textbook violation of ethics laws.

Will the state Ethics Commission decide the same thing? We can’t wait to find out.

Trey Parker as Alferd Packer ... still not as scary as Elijah Wood in ''Sin City.''

Self-proclaimed “equal opportunity offender” Trey Parker won’t be on hand for this month’s Insurgo Theater Movement production of his 1996 student film project, Cannibal! The Musical, but longtime collaborator Jason McHugh will be. He played Frank Miller in the film, has co-conspired with Parker on numerous other projects and will be executive producer for the Vegas stage version, opening March 14.

Expect freaky-humored Insurgo artistic director John Beane to do something memorable with Parker’s horrifically embellished tale of 19th century sarcophage Alferd Packer, the first person to be convicted of cannibalism in the U.S., and watch for the CityLife review in the March 20 issue.

In the most exciting primary season in decades, we find it a bit odd that the Mainstream Media hasn’t besought America’s Dark Lord of the Stolen Election Karl Rove for his view. Democrats think this man is the Antichrist, but Rove’s unholy, preternatural ability to manipulate the electorate at will and grind opponents into sapless, writhing shadows of their former selves ranks him No. 1 in America’s political pantheon.

As fate would have it, Rove does handicap the three remaining presidential candidates, at last. If each of them has the balls to take Rove’s advice, Election 2008 could be the best political theater since Macbeth.

More money for teachers. Not this kind of Money, though.

There’s a grand experiment in education getting under way in New York, where a new charter school will pay teachers salaries of $125,000 — a striking contrast to, say, the dismal, low-thirties starting wage for Clark County teachers, a moldy holdover from the outdated view of teachers as mere glorified secretaries, babysitters, supermoms and tyke-shepherds. From the piece:

The school’s creator and first principal, Zeke M. Vanderhoek, contends that high salaries will lure the best teachers. He says he wants to put into practice the conclusion reached by a growing body of research: that teacher quality - not star principals, laptop computers or abundant electives - is the crucial ingredient for success.

Vanderhoek has many of the other variables in this experiment controlled: Class sizes will be fairly large at 30 students, and music and Latin will be the only electives.

Perhaps most strikingly, though, teachers will earn more than the principal, who will pull down $90,000. That should please both long-suffering teachers and critics of do-little administration “educrats” who eat up school money.