So much material, so little time. Here we go!

• Las Vegas Sands Chairman Sheldon Adelson testified company President Bill Weidner broke his fiduciary duty to the company, but later said he didn’t. What, is Adelson on drugs or something? Oh, yeah, right.
• U.S. Sen. John Ensign once again puts philosophy before people. But what’s death by hepatitis or HIV compared to the importance of getting a “clean bill” through Congress?
• Remember these words: “We can make money from the Olympics. We will not make a bid unless we can make a profit. We know it can be done without taxpayer dollars because Los Angeles did it.” — Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, on a push to bring the Olympic games to Reno and Lake Tahoe in 2018.
• Why remember? Because they are undoubtedly total bullshit.
• Controller Kim Wallin refuses to recognize Gov. Jim Gibbons’s budget cuts, because she says the law does not allow it. At least one constitutional officer isn’t afraid to mix it up in Carson City. Meanwhile, what’s Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto up to?
• Somebody in the governor’s office got up really early when she realized that a NASA climate scientist was saying Gibbons was a coal-tard. (We’re paraphrasing, of course.)
• Don’t disturb the creepy cat lady. She’ll cut you.
• Seriously, it’s against the law to “…intentionally plac[e] another person in reasonable apprehension of immediate bodily harm.” And that column reads like a written confession!

People who really run Nevada, No. 211: Boyd Gaming, which was able to get citations for willful misconduct in the grisly deaths of two maintenance men at The Orleans negotiated down to simple “serious” violations, a case that’s attracted the attention of federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration officials.

According to a must-read piece in the Las Vegas Sun, it was the intervention of ex-banking lobbyist Mendy Elliott, now installed as the director of the state Department of Business and Industry, that smoothed things along. Unusual? Well, a state employee and a Boyd employee quit over the resolution, so we’d say, hell, yeah.

Seriously. It’s a must-read. Click on the link now.

So it seems that Harrah’s Entertainment, which recently changed its name to Caesars, is refusing to release an internal audit that details 34 remodeling projects undertaken since 2000 without benefit of permits, inspections, etc. Clark County, which has a copy of the audit, refuses to release it as well. And the Nevada State Contractor’s Board, effectively muzzled by state senator/construction industry lobbyist Warren Hardy in the last legislature, won’t release it either.

“We continue to work closely with the county on all the identified projects,” wrote Marybel Batjer, a Harrah’s Entertainment executive, to the Review-Journal when it asked for a copy of the report.

This is the same company, we can’t help but point out, that no longer carries the Review-Journal in any of its hotels, obviously because it’s irked at the fact the newspaper revealed a massive remodeling of the Rio — among other properties — that was done without permits and potentially put guests in danger.

But Harrah’s/Caesars is still open for business, having allegedly fixed the problems pointed out in the Review-Journal series. The company is still inviting guests to come stay for a visit. Unfortunately, the Review-Journal also has reported that inspectors had suspiciously friendly relationships with the company, throwing the quality of those inspections into serious question.

Our point? Harrah’s has breached the trust that it had with the public. Until the company comes clean, and releases this audit publicly, its not entitled to trust. You can’t flagrantly violate the law — and potentially put people’s lives in danger — and then say “trust us” when reporters come asking questions. Trust is earned, and once broken, needs to be earned back. Harrah’s has a ways to go before it earns back the public’s trust.

I’m just catching up on my articles-written-about-Criss-Angel reading, so I’m finding this news of a Cirque/Criss collaboration Norm-punchingly alarming and, well, astoundingly ghey at the same time.

Reader Betty Buehler writes in response to Meredith McGhan’s piece on literacy:

Meredith McGhan is on target about lack of literacy here [”Read it or weep,” April 17]. However, I’m an intelligent, literate, educated person, and I was forced into buying a home with an adjustable-rate mortgage. It was that, a dump, or nothing. In order to buy something even moderate, east of downtown, not in the suburbs, on a teacher’s salary plus child support, I had to buy with an ARM. I had been divorced, and my husband, making more than twice what I did as a teacher, was able to afford a horse-zoned half-acre in Centennial Hills for himself and my oldest child.

However, a divorce judge left my younger child and I to live the low-budget life. Now I’m struggling not to lose the house. My child will at least have a home for another year until leaving for college. I’ll have done the best I could as a mother. But Las Vegas has treated me as trash as both a stay-at-home mom and teacher, so if I lose my house, this teacher is outta here.

Once again, Las Vegas leads in scumminess and scamming. Why would people have thought lenders would lend to people who couldn’t pay? Those who sucked up the money from this scam should be the ones to suffer; but it’ll never happen. In Las Vegas, the sleaziest of businesses receive preferential treatment if they make money somehow, anyhow, no matter how; but we drive teachers away. And treat good mothers like garbage, to boot. What a city.