As CityLife reported back in January, to say that area veterans have a tough time re-adjusting to civilian life here is like saying the surge in Iraq is working — or that, no matter which Muslim caliphate is next on the neocon hit list, we’ll be greeted as liberators there, too.

So, when news broke on April Fool’s Day that bureaucrats and builders would, in the coming weeks, ink the final contracts for Southern Nevada’s first full-service Veterans Administration medical center, area veterans must surely have been nonplussed.

Was the news real or some twisted joke, some callous April 1 prank, on the hundreds of thousands of Nevada vets who’ve waited more than a decade for a level of local health care that matches the commitment they’ve shown their country?

Turns out, this is one scoop that’ll stick. U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Las Vegas- who seems to be among the precious few Nevada politicians who won’t let ego and greed get in the way of accomplishing the people’s business — said Tuesday that Southern Nevada vets can soon look forward to medical attention that doesn’t resemble a scene from the early flicks of David Cronenberg.

“As a member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, this project remains my number one priority, and I was pleased to learn today that the VA will soon be signing the final contracts for construction of our new state-of-the-art medical complex … America’s continued deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with an already aging veterans’ population, have increased the need for this VA medical complex and the demand for these services in the Valley only continues to grow,” said Berkley.

The new VA medical complex, which is slated to include a 90-bed hospital, a 120-bed nursing home and an outpatient clinic is scheduled to open in 2011. Just three more years of incalculable suffering left, so buck up, soldier!

People actually need to be told this? Guess so.

“You got a line graph?”

“Yeah. You know. With the state economy hurting and everything, I thought I’d get something to sort of commemorate the struggle we’re all in.”

“So it represents — what? — tax revenue?”

“Sure. Or even maybe our morale. It could be lots of things.”

“Like approval rating.”

“Uh, maybe. Or median home prices.”

“Or basic competence. Or even amount of vision.”

“Fine then. How about now? Huh? What’s it represent now?”

“You can’t keep your arm up like that all day.”

Now that we have your attention, here’s this week’s Savage Love web extra.

It really does have to do with boobs.

So, the Department of Energy is gearing up to foist its curdy clot of a half-baked license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission this summer in hopes of getting a federal nod to someday cram high-level nuclear waste in the DORMANT VOLCANO known as Yucca Mountain. If it actually makes the deadline, it’ll be either a miracle of efficiency or a historic act of willful sloppiness the likes of which the federal government has never seen.

Whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will actually scrutinize the application is another matter. But it won’t be because Nevada’s anti-nuke forces are sleeping on the job. Because the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects — the state entity charged with fighting the proposed nuke waste dump - told the NRC it could launch between 250 and 500 challenges to the project — making Yucca the most contested nuclear project ever considered by the federal government.

Why so many challenges? Because … well, there likely are at least 250-500 things grossly wrong with the project, and here’s hoping the NRC gives them all a good airing. A 777 to the state Agency for Nuclear Projects for continuing the fight!

What sparked the blaze at the three-alarm fire Jan. 25 at the Monte Carlo hotel-casino? By the Clark County Fire Department’s reckoning, it might as well have been caused by a stray lightning bolt from a sorcerer’s mystic orb.

That’s more or less the conclusion the department came to last week when it quite curiously decided not to cite the Monte Carlo in connection with the fire, which led to the evacuation of 6,000 people and cost nearly $100 million in damages and lost business. Somehow, fire officials forgot it originally blamed crewmen for failing to use protective slag mats, neglecting to post a fire watch worker and lacking a hot work permit from the county.

Amazingly — as the fire department’s balls presumably shriveled in the heat of the prospect of having to slap a big casino with a misdemeanor — more than a month later, responsibility vanished like a wisp of smoke, and a vague “in-house permit system” at the Monte Carlo was suddenly enough to cut corrugated steel atop the resort.

For the fire department’s cold feet, we sentence them to 666 — where no amount of water quenches the slag-fired flames!
A.K.

So Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith credits Gov. Jim Gibbons with showing leadership after he briefed lawmakers and the media Monday about the state’s ever-worsening budget crisis. Pardon us, but we disagree.

After scouring the story (linked above) and re-reading Gibbons’s comments, we see that — as we suspected — the governor’s response to the ever-deepening crisis is simply to cut more from the budget and utter more cliches.

“These are tough times for the state of Nevada,” he said.

“We are one Nevada, whether you are in the Legislature or in the administration,” he said.

“How can state government turn to people who are having to do with less?” he asked.

This is leadership?

We don’t really blame Smith for mistaking what Gibbons is doing for leading. Somewhere along the line, probably starting with the advent of the George W. Bush administration, we were treated to an entirely new definition of leadership, the religious adherence to a worldview no matter what reality dictates. Iraq threatens America! And we’ve been at war in that country ever since, despite the fact that Iraq never, ever threatened America.

For Gibbons, it’s no taxes, not ever. It’s a dogma he takes more seriously than anything, including his estranged Mormon faith. To an extent, it’s politically necessary; if he were to go back on this promise, his base would abandon him, and all would be lost. But it’s become his lifeline, his Rosary, his single, overriding North Star, guiding him through seas rough and calm.

But it’s not leadership. It’s not even close.

Why? Because a central element of leadership is vision. You have to have an idea where you want to lead, and how. What’s the vision behind no new taxes? A decimated, callow state government, hollowed from the inside out, unable to educate children, build roads, or maintain anything approaching a social safety net for its citizens? Could even Gibbons have that nightmare as a vision?

It’s doubtful he’s even thought that far ahead. He knows only one thing: No taxes. And no matter how much that philosophy hurts the state and its people, he will cleave to it, an ionic covalent bond of diamond-like strength. Meanwhile, Nevada becomes an object lesson from the 29th Proverb: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

Smith’s column right in at least one respect: Nevada needs vision, and the leadership that flows from it, now more than ever. It needs leaders who care enough about real people and real problems to put away simple slogans and philosophies decayed by the reality staring them in the face. It needs politicians able to rise above their own partisanship and do the right thing.

What is that right thing? Certainly, in tough times, the first thing to do is cut budgets and eliminate expenses wherever possible. It’s prudent to review everything the state is doing, to make sure those things line up with the state’s priorities. That’s the first step, and it’s what anybody would do.

But there comes a line — and we are very near approaching that line, if we haven’t crossed it already — when cutting is merely a rote exercise that does more harm than good. That’s when leadership, a vision, and the skill to convince people to come along of their own volition, comes in.

Unfortunately, if this governor has any inclination to that kind of leadership, he hasn’t shown it yet.