Tired of long blogs? Us, too. We don’t get paid by the word, after all. So let’s do some Quick Hits. Here we go!

• Quotable: “Government has one business: That’s to beat the crap out of you.” — Somer Hollingsworth, president of the Nevada Development Authority, speaking to the Perspective 2008 audience Thursday at the Rio. He’ll be there all week, people. Tip your waitress. And try the veal.
• Pop quiz: In which county can the military break down your door and search you, and you can be left with no legal recourse? Answer: George W. Bush’s post-Sept. 11 America.
• The Review-Journal thinks it’s a conflict for the Energy Department to hire a law firm to push the Yucca Mountain project, because the firm is already suing the government on behalf of nuclear power companies for failing to take care of nuclear waste. But don’t the utilities and the government have the same goal: screw Nevada? Problem solved, R-J.
• We’re going to go out on a limb and say … yes, the Nevada Resort Association will appeal the ruling that lets the teachers union put a gambling tax increase on the November ballot, assuming the union can get the signatures.
• What? Our corporate overlords are considering buying KLAS Channel 8 from Landmark Communications? They may end up as (minority) owners of a TV station, albeit the one with Katie Couric doing the news? Hey, corporate overlords: We’ve got a great idea for a TV show!
• Yes, state Sen. Bob Beers’s challenger Allison Copening is right: It’s not an “inherent conflict” for a public employee to run for the state Legislature. It is, however, a constitutional violation for one to serve in the Legislature. (Don’t worry, she quit her job at the Las Vegas Valley Water District to mount a bid against the best-looking state senator in Nevada history.)
• Not to put too fine a point on it, but KVBC Channel 3 weatherman John Fredericks may be insane. (Perverts! Scroll down past the nude Pamela Anderson item!)

Did you know that we’re haters? Of course you did! It’s probably why you read this blog. But we were surprised to be called out on it by Las Vegas Councilman Ricki Barlow. We don’t know the good councilman very well, but apparently, he’s familiar with the fact that we drink the Hatorade for breakfast, dine on Hater-Tots for lunch and cheer the passage of the Hatriot Act in the evening! (OK, we’ll stop now.)

Seriously, what is the freshman councilman’s beef? Well, he doesn’t like the fact that we’re critics of the proposal to build a new City Hall downtown. According to a story in the Las Vegas Sun, Barlow thinks all media critics of the facility are, simply, haters.

“Mayor, council?” Barlow said. “We’re going to take our hits, and I’m willing to take those hits, because we’re placing our city above and beyond other cities in bringing the variety of diversification into this city, which has long been needed for the entire community.

“Continue to do what you do — hate. Because that’s your job and we’ll continue to do what we do, and that’s be the true visionaries of this community.”

Well, don’t we feel  chastised.

Now, we will stipulate that it does take a lot of vision to lay off 31 people but then turn around and agree to commit taxpayer money and resources to build a new City Hall, one that even the city’s staff admits isn’t really needed to accommodate the city’s workforce. Oh, wait, no, that’s not vision. That’s more like … unmitigated gall and stone-like indifference to human suffering. Yeah, that’s it.

There we go again. Hating.

But seriously, think about this: The issue has brought together people who otherwise might not agree on anything. Review-Journal Publisher Sherm Frederick AND Las Vegas Sun Editor Brian Greenspun? The R-J’s libertarian editorial page AND Democratic columnist Erin Neff? All these people agree a new City Hall is a really shitty idea (we’re paraphrasing). They can’t all be haters, can they?

Maybe, and we’re just throwing this out there, building a new City Hall at this time isn’t such a good idea after all. Maybe, for the good of the taxpaying public, we media types are only “hating” on what we see as a waste of funds. Maybe, just maybe, this has nothing whatever to do with personal feelings, but rather a cool, objective look at the facts. (And yes, Mayor Oscar Goodman. We are aware of the fact that the deal is structured to limit taxpayer exposure and serve as the lynchpin to more redevelopment efforts downtown.)

Could it be that the media critics of a new City Hall aren’t haters at all? Could it be that they’re good citizens, doing what media types should do: serve as a watchdog on those who have the power of the public purse?

And if that’s true, it must follow that anybody who would impute bad motives to them has to be wrong, correct? And that means that Councilman Barlow might want to re-think his too-harsh rhetoric, step back and perhaps embrace a different theory.

Unless, of course, he’s every bit the idiot that his comments seem to imply.

Doh! There we go again. Hating.

We’ve long known that University of Nevada Reno political science professor Erik Herzik is a defender of Gov. Jim Gibbons. And by “defender,” of course, we mean apologist, devotee, enabler, admirer, and obsessed president of the governor’s ever-shrinking fan club.

But we were genuinely surprised to read today’s newspaper, in which Herzik seems to be remembering a different reality inhabited by him and his one true love, the governor.

“It is not a rosy future,” Herzik said, discussing the fact that the state’s budget deficit has grown to almost $900 million. “Remember, just six months ago people were saying Jim Gibbons was making things up when he started talking about budget cuts. Well, nobody is in denial anymore.”

Except, maybe, for Herzik.

See, we follow these things pretty closely, and we don’t recall anybody saying Gibbons was making things up.  (About the economy, that is. Lots of people say Gibbons was making things up when he, say, explained what really happened with  Chrissy Mazzeo, or what happened on that unreported cruise with Warren Trepp, or what his real stance on the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s pipeline may be. And that’s the short list.)

Anyway, we do recall people saying Gibbons was being too hasty in calling for budget cuts. Or that he should wait to see what tax returns looked like in a few months. Or that he should cut construction projects and use the Rainy Day Fund to balance the shortfall. Or that he should be more open about the budget numbers and his proposed cuts. We even remember people like university Chancellor Jim Rogers and Clark County officials refusing to identify budgets to cut.

But saying the governor was making things up? No, we just don’t recall that happening, Erik.

Perhaps that was, um, made up?

So the rascals behind those two ballot initiatives that would siphon money from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority for schools, or schools, roads and public safety, are charging that the lawsuit aimed at killing the initiative is illegal.

The School Funding Solutions Ballot Advocacy Group is fronted by former state Treasurer (and Assemblyman) Bob Seale, with major support and inspiration from Las Vegas Sands and its chairman, Sheldon Adelson. The LVCVA has long been one of Adelson’s targets.

Recently, the LVCVA — joined by every local government in the county — sued in Carson City to prevent the initiatives from making the ballot. In its reply to that lawsuit, the School Funding Solutions folks are charging that the lawsuit itself is an illegal expenditure of public money aimed at thwarting a ballot question.

Here’s the law in question, NRS Chapter 281A.520:

1.  Except as otherwise provided in subsections 4 and 5, a public officer or employee shall not request or otherwise cause a governmental entity to incur an expense or make an expenditure to support or oppose:

(a) A ballot question.

(b) A candidate.

6.  As used in this section:

      (a) “Governmental entity” means:

             (1) The government of this State;

             (2) An agency of the government of this State;

             (3) A political subdivision of this State; and

             (4) An agency of a political subdivision of this State.

 Now, if you ask us, the LVCVA is, indeed, a governmental entity as defined in the law. And the majority of its board members are, indeed, public officers. And the filing of a lawsuit against the initiatives does, indeed, require the governmental entity to incur an expense or make an expenditure. And the purpose of that expenditure is, in fact, to oppose a ballot question, inasmuch as keeping it away from voters constitutes opposition.

As we recall, this provision of the law was last invoked back in 2006, when the fine folks at the Marijuana Policy Project charged that various police agencies, as well as county lawmakers, were using public funds to campaign against the measure that would have legalized an ounce of pot for adult personal use.

In that case, however, a District Court judge ruled right before the election that elected officials and public employees had not violated the law by advocating against the marijuana initiative. Instead, he said, public officials had the right to speak out about the initiative, even when that speech involved an incidental use of public funds. (The university system board of regents — which many suspected to be large consumers of pot — had unsuccessfully tried to pass a resolution against it.)

How will this come out? We suspect a judge will rule that, since LVCVA funding is a matter of government interest and concern, the public officers on the board did not violate NRS 281A.520 when they voted to use public funds to file a lawsuit to oppose the initiatives. This is, of course, a separate thing altogether from saying they actually didn’t violate the law, which it appears they did.

Reader Mark Kostner writes:

If anyone could write the Great Las Vegas novel, it would be one of you guys at CityLife. All you’d have to do is assemble the tales of all the characters you have covered, change the names, blend some the stories, create some what-if scenarios, and I’m sure you could concoct a great novel.Just off the top of my head, the G-Sting case and the Binion murder trial alone had a lot of great stories. Truth is stranger than fiction.

Steve Sebelius could write the Great American Political novel with all the craziness he’s seen on his beat. I could see him writing a classic on a Nevada governor that would be a riot, not to mention all the county commissioners who’ve come and gone and all their follies, and what if Bob Stupak had won some of those elections he ran in and what might have happened? Ditto with some of the memorable losers and what their administrations have been. You could even give characters famous names like some of our elected officials like Tom Collins, Michael Douglas, Steve Miller, or Michael McDonald — who share names with actors, rock stars, drinks — and who might have gotten elected because their names rang bells with people, many of whom just moved here and have no idea who anyone is.

It is, of course, your American duty to have already made up your mind about who should be president, and by now firmly closed it. The only ones still on the fence are the magpies. So we won’t tout New York magazine’s Electopedia 2008 it terms of its usefulness, thank God. We won’t argue that its tidily arranged breakdown of candidate facts, from information you ought to know about the three contenders (Most Egregious Flip-Flop, Never-Altered Core Position, Greatest Private-Sector Liability) to stuff you just want to know (Best Debate Smackdown, Most Spectacular Source of Income) will aid you in the commission of democracy. We won’t even propose it as a source of quick-rebuttal info next the the family gets together and your dad gets on your case about supporting a communist (or maybe that’s just me).

No, we’ll merely suggest it as a form of surprisingly nutritious brain-snacking — like improbably tasty granola bites you can’t stop popping. McCain caught right-wing crap for his Wedding Crashers cameo! Obama gets a weekly trim at the Hyde Park Hair Barber Studio! Hillary is worth an estimated $34.9 million! We could consume this junk all day.

Father, big-hearted activist, wrestling impresario, auto shop owner and columnist James “Buffalo Jim” Barrier died yesterday. According to preliminary information from the coroner’s office, Barrier died from natural causes at the Motel 6 on 4125 Boulder Highway. But journalist and former City Councilman Steve Miller, a longtime friend of Barrier, suspects foul play and has contacted the FBI.

Another article in the Canadian Free Press elaborates here.

Gov. Jim Gibbons last week came out all in favor of the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s pipeline project that aims to pump rural groundwater down to thirsty Las Vegas. In a Thursday speech to the Perspective 2008 crowd, Gibbons said Nevada must invest in the in-state groundwater project, and that we must decrease our dependence on the Colorado River as the main source of water for Las Vegas.

Then, in a news conference later that day, Gibbons added that he would not oppose the pipeline project, and that it is “part of the solution” for Southern Nevada.

Now, this was news primarily because Gibbons had previously declared exactly the opposite, and more than once. Review-Journal reporter Henry Brean noted the inconsistency by referring to a story that appeared in the Lahontan Valley News back in February, in which Gibbons said the project “…should be scrapped in favor of building desalination plants on the Pacific Coast,” according to Brean’s story. (Sure enough, a check of the Lahontan Valley News’s website finds an article quoting the governor saying exactly that.)

But Gibbons told Brean that he never said such a thing: ““They didn’t quote me saying that, because I didn’t say that. No, what I said is there may be alternatives that we can look at. I didn’t say we should scrap that project.”

Actually, they did quote the governor saying that. And if there was ever a request for a correction, clarification, or retraction, one is not appended to the story in question on the Lahontan Valley News’s website.

To be honest, we were a little curious ourselves. See, we know of not just one, but at least two times the governor has come out against the project. The first documented occasion was back in February 2007, when the Las Vegas Sun reported that Gibbons had told a meeting in Carson City that the pipeline wasn’t a good idea and shouldn’t be built. At that time, Gibbons and his staff didn’t deny the governor had said it. Instead, his then-Deputy Chief of Staff Steve Robinson said Gibbons’s remarks were taken out of context by two environmentalists attending a meeting, Scot Rutledge of the Nevada Conservation League and Bob Fulkerson of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada.

Then again, Rutledge and Fulkerson were present at the meeting and heard Gibbons say things such as “The Southern Nevada Water Authority is not going to like what I’m about to say,” and “I’m not sure a pipeline is necessary.”  Robinson was not present at the meeting but was briefed on it later. He’s since left the governor’s employ.

Poor Fulkerson. This marks the second time he’s been snookered by the governor’s pro, con, pro routine on the pipeline. (PLAN and other environmental groups even thanked Gibbons for standing against the pipeline after the Lahontan Valley News story!) “I think we just have to wait another couple of months and see if he has another position. It’s almost comical,” Fulkerson told the Reveiw-Journal for Friday’s story. “I think it shows the lights are on but nobody’s home. I just think it’s a real shame for the state of Nevada.”

We strongly disagree with Fulkerson. It’s not “almost comical.” It’s totally comical.

Anyway, we wanted to get to the truth ourselves, so we asked Gibbons’s press secretary, Ben Kieckhefer about it. Here’s the official word:

The Governor on Thursday stated that he never was against the project and that if a newspaper quoted him saying as such he was misquoted. Instead he has stated that he’s concerned about the ramifications the project will have on Eastern Nevada, both economically and socially. He does believe that the pipeline project should move forward and help diversify the water supply in southern Nevada. He continues to believe that desalination projects are an option to increasing the total water supply, and recently reiterated that belief to SNWA officials.

Now, the cynical among us might take note of the fact that every time he’s “misquoted,” it happens to be in the northern part of the state, which is against the pipeline, and every time he’s accurately quoted (i.e., in favor of the project, albeit reluctantly) it’s in the south, which favors the pipeline. Also, cynics would probably say that, after being “misquoted” once, the governor would take extreme care not to be misunderstood again, assuming he really was misquoted the first time. And finally, the cynical might add, it’s very unlikely that environmentalists would forget Gibbons coming out against the project, as they would have been mighty surprised to hear what they would consider a pro-environmental message from a governor not known for being an environmentalist.

(Funny story: In Congress, Gibbons would revel in his very low ratings from the League of Conservation Voters. One year, an anti-Yucca Mountain vote was included in the grading, which elevated Gibbons from the usual 0 percent to something like a 9 percent. According to a then-aide, a surprised Gibbons wondered how he’d managed to do something an environmental group liked.)

Anyway, even if Fulkerson is flummoxed at Gibbons’s stance(s) on the pipeline, the Southern Nevada Water Authority is not. After his anti-pipeline comments were reported in February, authority General Manager Pat Mulroy said “I am not sure the governor fully understands what’s happening down here.”

But now, clearly, he does: “The important thing is that he has all the information,” says authority Deputy General Manager Dick Wimmer, who briefed Gibbons on the issue. “I think we accomplished that.”

For now, Dick. For now.

(FULL DISCLOSURE: We at Various Things & Stuff are married to an associate at Faiss Foley Warren Public Relations & Government Affairs. The Southern Nevada Water Authority is a client of that firm.)

Because of technical difficulties, we had trouble at the tail end of last week logging into the old Blog-O-Matic here in the nondescript industrial building near McCarran International Airport where we have our offices. We were switching web hosting services and had trouble refreshing our DNS servers, or so we’re told. Honestly, they could tell us that somebody forgot to enter the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 into the computer down in the hatch and we had a magnetic overload or something, and we’d probably believe it.

But never fear, blog fans! We are at this very moment preparing some material for your enjoyment. Stand by, and good luck.