If watching this laugh-a-minute comedy doesn't cure you, nothing will.

What will it take to get the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services to act with something resembling dispatch and urgency? Jabbering ebola zombies shambling through the streets? An invasion of pod people? A rabid Lindsay Lohan rubbing her inflamed juicy on schoolchildren? Well, an outbreak of hepatitis C possibly affecting 40,000 Southern Nevadans hasn’t much moved state health officials.

In the latest news, a round of surprise inspections revealed unsafe medical practices occurred at as many as 13 other valley clinics. Which ones? Officials wouldn’t say because they said it would jeopardize an ongoing investigation. Said one official to the Review-Journal, “What we’re afraid of is that people will, once they see their name not out there, think they are in the clear. … We still plan to do more surprise visits.”

Translation: The health department needs cavalier clinics to continue possibly putting people at risk of getting hepatitis C or even HIV — so the department can better prevent people from getting hepatitis or even HIV! Talk about the cure being worse than the disease. Fortunately the white-hot flames of 666 are always sterile!
A.K.

Why isn't his head on Mount Rushmore?

It’s hard to get too frothy about MGM Mirage’s recently unveiled $40 million public art program at CityCenter. If MGM Mirage execs really wanted to create public art, they’d site it somewhere else besides their own privatopia-in-progress, where it’ll largely serve to flatter spendy jet-setters who’ll call the oligopolis in miniature part-time home. But, hey, we’ll take our pseudo-public amenities where we can get ‘em.

So let’s stop being so dickish for a moment and remark on just how cool it’ll be to host pieces by renowned artists from Maya Lin, creator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C., to Richard Long, famous for his sculptures made from leaves, sticks and rocks.

If Steve Wynn proved that Las Vegas could creditably host famous works by dead painters, the MGM Mirage initiative proves Las Vegas is just as relevant when it comes to attracting living, working artists. Let’s muse later on What It All Means. In the meantime, we give MGM Mirage a 777 for making some bold strokes.

State Sen. Warren Hardy appeared on Face to Face with Jon Ralston on Friday, too late for us to blog it before the weekend. But that’s what Mondays are for, right?

Hardy dismissed the 36-page ethics complaint filed against him last week — and the subject of an earlier post — as “a partisan attack,” and a union-sponsored attack. But that’s a dodge as old as the hills. (You thought we were going to say “as old as John McCain, didn’t you? That would be mean.)

The key question is not “what are the motives of the people who filed the complaint?” but rather, “Did Hardy break ethics laws, as the complaint alleges?” The answer, says Hardy, is no.

(A brief summary: Hardy is president of the Associated Builders and Contractors of Las Vegas, a non-union contractor’s group. He’s also an elected official. And he voted on matters that affected the ABC in his legislative role.)

Hardy said he received a legal blessing from the Legislative Counsel Bureau to vote on measures like SB 509, which would have required public works projects to pay a prevailing wage. And at first blush, it seems like Hardy has an undeniable conflict. Check out the words of NRS 281A.400(2):

A public officer or employee shall not use his position in government to secure or grant unwarranted privileges, preferences, exemptions or advantages for himself, any business entity in which he has a significant pecuniary interest, or any person to whom he has a commitment in a private capacity to the interests of that person.

(The actual complaint against Hardy cites another section of the Ethics in Government Law. We just tossed this statute in because it seems to us that Hardy (”a public officer”) has used “his position in government” to “grant” an “unwarranted privilege, preference and advantage,” to “a business entity in which he has a significant pecuniary interest,” i.e. ABC, which pays him $200,000 a year. But that’s just us.)

Check further the language of NRS 281A.420(2), which actually is cited in the complaint:

Except as otherwise provided in subsection 3, in addition to the requirements of the code of ethical standards, a public officer shall not vote upon or advocate the passage or failure of, but may otherwise participate in the consideration of, a matter with respect to which the independence of judgment of a reasonable person in his situation would be materially affected by:

(a) His acceptance of a gift or loan;

(b) His pecuniary interest; or

(c) His commitment in a private capacity to the interests of others.

(And in case you’re wondering, yes, the law further defines “commitment in a private capacity to the interests of others,” to include an employer. SEE NRS 281A.420(7)(c).

Pretty clear, eh? Hardy, a public officer, did vote on several matters in which the independence of his judgment was materially affected by his private commitment to ABC. Open and shut, guilty, right?

Not according to Hardy, who says a fuller reading of the law totally exonerates him. Check out the passage to which he’s referring, and we promise this will be the last portion of the NRS we quote in this post:

It must be presumed that the independence of judgment of a reasonable person would not be materially affected by his pecuniary interest or his commitment in a private capacity to the interests of others where the resulting benefit or detriment accruing to him or to the other persons whose interests to which the member is committed in a private capacity is not greater than that accruing to any other member of the general business, profession, occupation or group. The presumption set forth in this subsection does not affect the applicability of the requirements set forth in subsection 4 relating to the disclosure of the pecuniary interest or commitment in a private capacity to the interests of others. [NRS 281A.420(2)(c)]

Ah, ha! says Hardy. Because the resulting benefit or detriment accruing to the ABC’s members was not greater than that accruing to every other member of the general business (i.e. all other non-union contractors, even those that are not ABC members), he’s off the hook. According to Hardy, 85 percent of contractors are non-union, and he has but 200 members in his organization. But they all benefited equally from his legislative efforts.

“The reality of it is here I followed the laws exactly the way, I disclosed that we have a lobbying effort up there, the lobbyists have been disclosed,” Hardy said.

At this point, some of you are probably confused, even angry. In Warren Hardy’s World, the head of the Nevada Mining Association could introduce a bill that erases all mining fees, shepherd that bill through the Legislature, kill contrary amendments, bring the measure to the floor, and vote with full-throated vigor and be legally and morally OK, so long as the bill affects all mining operations equally. The head of the trial lawyers lobby could introduce a bill eliminating all caps on non-economic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits, and not have committed an ethical breech, because the resulting benefit would accrue to every lawyer in Nevada. The president of the state teachers union could get elected and write a law that says school salaries are going up by 100 percent, and despite the personal benefit, be fine, since all teachers would get the raise.

The Legislature could literally be populated with the heads of special interest groups, all tending to their own interests, and nobody could do a goddamn thing about it, at least in Hardy’s World.

Why, the law is an ass! you say.

Indeed, it is. But Hardy has his Legislative Counsel Bureau legal opinion to back him up.

But let’s take another look at the law Hardy’s using to shield himself from legal danger, shall we? It says “It must be presumed that the independence of judgment of a reasonable person would not be materially affected by his pecuniary interest or his commitment in a private capacity to the interests of others where the resulting benefit or detriment accruing to him or to the other persons whose interests to which the member is committed in a private capacity is not greater than that accruing to any other member of the general business, profession, occupation or group.”

Now, we’re just spitballing here, but consider this: Hardy is paid a hefty $200,000 annually as president of ABC. And although he got the job a year before he was elected to the state Senate, his utility to the group is immeasurably enhanced by the fact that he, unlike other lobbyists, can vote on bills, introduce bills, kill amendments in his committee and generally influence the legislative process thanks to his chairmanship of the Government Affairs Committee. He’s a superlobbyist, if you will.

Now, thanks to his successes in the Legislature (some of which the ABC has boasted about in newsletters to members) Hardy continues in his role as president. If he were no longer able to act as a senator, with access to the gears and levers of government, his utility to the ABC would be diminished considerably. The group might not fire him, but he’d certainly be less useful as a mere mortal lobbyist.

Therefore, although his votes on bills affect ABC members and non-members equally, they represent a unique benefit to him, i.e. the ability to continue receiving his $200,000 annual salary. And out of all the people in Nevada, only Hardy benefits from this salary. Which means his independence of judgment is materially affected because the resulting benefit of his votes (continued employment at the helm of ABC) is greater than that accruing to, say, anybody else in Nevada.

And that means Hardy may still be guilty of violating the law that he says exonerates him. Or at least we think that’s a possibility. We’re not lawyers, after all.

Finally, on the show Friday, Hardy said that perhaps there should be a separate debate as to whether interest group chiefs such as himself should be allowed to serve in the Legislature. “You know, Jon, that’s a discussion maybe we should have. Maybe guys like me shouldn’t serve in the Legislature,” he said.

“OK, fine, so let’s have a discussion and change the law and when you change the law to say I can’t serve, I’ll quit. But the law now permits me to serve, it permits my constituents and my industry to have a voice in the Legislature.” (Not necessarily in that order, you understand.)

There’s no need for Hardy to quit; the law clearly permits him to serve. But as far as we can see, it doesn’t allow him to vote on matters affecting the group that pays him his full-time salary. And because he did, the Ethics Commission’s got an interesting case coming up.

U.S. Sen. John McCain has been cozying up to the Christian right of late, having flip-flopped after denouncing the movement’s leaders as “agents of intolerance.” (Here’s a hint, senator: Always stick with your first instinct.)

But laboring under the belief that he needs the churchgoing types in order to get to the White House, McCain proudly accepted the endorsement of one John Hagee of Texas, an evangelical preacher with a big church and sadly conventional (for evangelicals) views of the end times.

Hagee, dipping into the Revelation of St. John the Divine for inspiration, has called the Roman Catholic Church “the great whore [of Babylon],” “a false cult system” and “the apostate church.” Nice. See you in purgatory, asshole!

Anyway, McCain at first brushed off calls that he repudiate these statements, saying simply that he doesn’t agree with Hagee on everything. (Whew! That’s a relief! For a second we thought McCain might feel it’s OK for the government to control the reproductive life of women of child-bearing age. Oh, wait…)

Alas, the pressure seems to have gotten too great for the vaunted war hero McCain, who bravely suffered more than five years of punishment in a Vietnamese POW camp. This time around, it took only a couple weeks to break McCain’s will, and there wasn’t a bamboo cage in sight.

“We’ve had a dignified campaign and I repudiate any comments that are made, including Pastor Hagee’s, if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics,” McCain said.

Wait, what? Did he just say “if”? “IF” calling the church “the great whore” or “apostate” is offensive? That would be like us saying McCain is a no-good, lying, warmongering, lobbyist-loving hypocritcal son-of-a-bitch, but then apologizing “if” those words are offensive to him. (Note that we, like McCain, have not apologized on the basis of what we said not being true.)

Whatever, Senator Straight Talk.

I checked out the wildflower bloom at Death Valley this weekend after reading about how nature’s wondrous burgeon this year was guaranteed to make my soul quiver as I apprehended the import of such delicate beauty amid a sun-seared desert landscape; meditations on the fragility of life and the implacable gravity of time follow, blah blah, etc. etc.

Here’s what I saw:

Huh? It was pretty in a hausfrau’s-watercolor-society kind of way, but I was far from impressed. Maybe it was because nature’s wordless glory had a $20 cover charge. Or maybe my expectations were a bit too high, which explains my momentary fit of pique:

But once I stood there and stared for a while, I actually did get something of a head rush reflecting on delicate beauty amid a sun-seared desert landscape, and yeah, I might have even had a few meditations on the fragility of life and the implacable gravity of time, blah blah, etc. etc.

Overall, an admirable effort. I give the wildflower bloom at Death Valley a 7 out of 10!

Now playing at Big Lots.

Ah, Big Lots, how I love you. Big Lots has been the source of many unexpectedly inexpensive necessities in my life. However, not since the surfeit of $1 copies of The Filth and the Fury has there been a score like my Cult Classics 20-movie box set. For a whopping $6, I got 20 classics of black-and-white cheeseball exploitation cinema.

She Shoulda Said No! is a classic black-and-white marijuana hysteria flick, with the added frisson with of starring Lila Leeds. Yes, the Lila Leeds who got busted for smoking weed with Robert Mitchum back in 1948. Bob’s career flourished, but Lila’s was over except for the odd trash flick such as this. It’s pretty heavy-handed, but it moves fast and the “high” scenes are great: Superimposition City like first-year film school, but the sight of showgirls and rainbows fading in and out over the undeniably lovely face of Leeds (who huffs her muggles like a pro) or ballerinas and grand pianos whirling through space as theremins go wild is still pretty gosh darn neat.

The Wild and the Wicked is another Hollywood morality tale, this time set in the 50’s. Innocent kid goes to visit her glamorous sister in L.A., becomes an “artist’s model” (wink wink) and a hooker about 10 minutes later. This movie didn’t teach me much about the pitfalls of the high life, but it did teach me that, the more facial hair a guy has, the more evil he is. Mustache = minor henchman. Goatee = manager. Full beard = criminal mastermind.

Not that they’re all gems: Gambling With Souls is a dull, episodic 30’s morality tale starring a Z-grade Bette Davis knockoff; Mad Youth is similarly dull, but is at least brightened by periodic non-sequitur nightclub acts. A Mariachi band, a tap dancer, someone doing the limbo and a dancing goat: Now that’s entertainment!

I haven’t even cracked open Terror of Tiny Town, the all-midget Western, or Chained for Life starring Daisy and Violet Hilton (the only Hilton sisters who matter, y’all), not to mention The Cocaine Fiends, The Marijuana Menace, Sex Madness or Escort Girl. Final weird touch: mixed in with all this bottom-feeder schlock is legendary German auteur G.W.Pabst’s silent masterpiece, The Joyless Street, starring a young Greta Garbo.

For more Lissa Townsend Rodgers, see her blog at www.ladyscorpio.com.

There’s a sad trend in newspapers, which is to sell advertising space on the front page, or at least a section front. And from the looks of things, the Review-Journal has done just that.

But wait! That’s not an ad! It’s an actual story penned by state Sen. Joe Heck from the desert sands of Iraq, where he’s  serving as an Army colonel in charge of a medical unit. (It’s also front-and-center on the R-J’s website today.)

In fact, it’s the first in “a series of dispatches,” according to an editor’s note that disclosed Heck’s service in the Nevada Legislature. What the note didn’t disclose, however, was the fact that Heck is up for re-election in November!

Talk about publicity you can’t buy. As if this maudlin sendoff story wasn’t enough to ensure Heck’s re-election, this “series of dispatches” certainly is! By the way, that sound you heard this morning was Democratic state Sen. Dina Titus’s head exploding when she took a look at Chapter One of the Heck Chronicles. (Heck was one of the two state Senate candidates that Titus was hoping to unseat. Good luck with that, now.)

This is no knock on Heck. We salute his decision to deploy to Iraq, something he could have avoided if he chose. He went, and that takes major cojones.

We’re also not saying there’s no news value in having a local guy report from the front. If this was Henderson resident and Lance Cpl. John Smith of the 1st Marine Battalion writing about his experiences, fine. But Heck is not just any soldier/doctor. He’s also a politician, and he’s got a race coming up. And if the laws were just, the R-J would have to declare the loan of its Nevada section front as an in-kind contribution.

So how was the piece? There are some pretty good passages, even if the outlook is predictable. (The Iraqis are happy to have been liberated; they’re very grateful; etc.)

You know, now that we think about it, this could be a whole new genre in R-J journalism. Why not have other senators write about their private enterprises, too? You could have state Sen. Maurice Washington of Sparks write about insurance reform. You could have state Sen. Mark Amodei write about how mining works for Nevada. State Sen. Warren Hardy could opine about the evils of prevailing wage laws. And state Sen. Bob Beers could pen stories about what it’s like to be so damn good looking.

Yes, all those lawmakers are Republicans. But we’re not being partisan. We just can’t conceive of a situation in which a Democrat would get this kind of opportunity in the R-J. Even if said Democrat went off to war like Heck.

Are you reading CityBlog because you recognize the need to constantly restock your mental shelves with stylish new product, or because you had 13 seconds of time otherwise unclaimed by work, home, e-mail, texting, Facebook, Twitter and more texting — and couldn’t cope with the nothingness? In 2008, there’s nothing that continuously connected, hyperlinked, BlackBerried, worldwide-webbed Americans fear more than the crushing boredom that sets in the nanosecond you’ve finished one text and don’t have another. An entire 10 seconds without fresh stimulus!

This is the sort of thing that makes an MSM assignment editor’s eyes sparkle. Moderately moralizing trend piece! And so the Boston Globe weighs in with this defense of boredom. “We are most human when we feel dull,” the author writes, which, if nothing else, makes us wonder about the people of Boston. Her thesis is that the longer you’re bored, the more creative you’ll be about overcoming it, resulting in cultural innovation, etc. … and conversely, you see, if you spackle every mildly dull second with cell-phone Tetris, your creativity will lag and you’ll grow up to be the old lady in the phone commerical who can only communicate in SMS abbreviations.

The piece does, however, forward a tidy comparison of our new fear of disconnection with the drug industry — the way that routine blues and twitches are now “syndromes” in need of medication, thanks to Big Pharma. Likewise, Big Connection packs every conceivable service into its handhelds, the better to ensure that you never let go, that you never unplug, that you never suffer a boring moment.

(Disclosure: This blogger once assigned a trend piece on boredom. It was better than this one.)