It’s that time of year, readers! The Los Angeles Times is once again hosting its annual Festival of Books on the beautiful campus of the University of California Los Angeles. It’s a weekend of literary events, seminars, book peddling and politics, all in the heart of glorious West Los Angeles. We so look forward to it every year. And yes, we realize that’s dorky.

We’ll be out of the office for a few days to attend the festival, as well as visit a few bookstores in the greater Los Angeles area, one of which — Dutton’s Brentwood — we’re sad to report is closing after more than two decades. Along with the death of The Reading Room in the Mandalay Place mall, it’s another bad trend in literature.

Anyway, if we find something blog-worthy in the great City of Angels, we’ll hop on the trusty BlackBerry and try to hammer out a post with a Los Angeles dateline. If not, we’re either enjoying sunny Southern California too much, or we were nabbed by our old adversary, the California Highway Patrol. Ah, but this time, we’ll be in our new, low-profile news cruiser, designed with radar-absorbing angles. And that FTL drive we had installed as an option should come in handy…

Until Monday, then, good night and good luck.

Big Gambling is moving forward on all fronts against the Nevada State Education Association’s attempt to increase the gambling tax to 9.75 percent. There’s a campaign in the rural parts of Nevada urging residents not to sign (by law, signatures must be gathered in every Nevada county). And now, MGM Mirage Chairman Terry Lanni has gotten in on the act.

With an e-mail and a video (props to my colleague Jon Ralston, who has both parked on his blog), Lanni makes a personal appeal to MGM Mirage employees not to sign. The highlights:

• Gambling companies already pay taxes that make up nearly half of the state’s general fund, a goodly portion of which goes to support schools.
• The teachers union is trying to effect “the biggest tax grab in Nevada history.” (Remember that: You will see that material again.)
• The tax increase is only three percentage points — from 6.75 percent to 9.75 percent — but in real terms would be an increase of 44 percent.
• There is no tie between higher teacher salaries generated by the tax and improvement of student performance. (Very clever, especially with the dismal news about math test failures in the news recently.)
• “None of us should sign this deceptive petition.” Hey, MGM Mirage employees: That means you!

The messaging in both the e-mail and the video — in which Lanni appears in shirt sleeves sans jacket, perhaps to appear less executive — is very slick. There are no outright lies, or even exaggerations, with the possible exception of the term “tax grab.” And both messages mention the fact that “…money that could otherwise create jobs and opportunities for our family of employees would be lost.” That’s an effective message to workers at a company that has seen more than 400 people let go thanks to the crappy economy.

Is it going to be effective? Perhaps. MGM Mirage would be foolish not to try to mobilize its massive workforce against the tax measure. But on the other hand, the company is still building the massive CityCenter project, has investment partners that are well-heeled, and owns some of the nicest properties on the Strip, including Mandalay Bay and Bellagio. None of those businesses is in danger of closing any time soon, and workers know that.

Still, when faced with the question of your job or education — which even Chancellor Jim Rogers says most people don’t care about — workers might be more than willing to pick their jobs.

One final note: The messages are entirely defensive. Lanni doesn’t mention a favorite theme from the past, which is that plenty of other businesses in Nevada get by without paying a damn thing on revenues. Another fight for another time, perhaps, when the teachers union doesn’t have a firing solution on Las Vegas Boulevard South locked into its war-fighting computer?

We’ve been tough on term limits on this blog: We don’t like them, and we think they should be erased. But there is one benefit to term limits: They reveal who the cowards are.

How you say? Well, consider this piece from the blog of my colleague Anjeanette Damon. She covered a health care hearing, and quoted some very telling remarks from a couple of state senators who are facing term limits.

“The worse thing that can happen to you is having a legislator who can’t run again,” state Sen. Randolph Townsend said to Tony Clark, the executive director the Nevada Board of Medical Examiners.

Why is that, senator? Why would a legislator who can’t run again be different than one who can?

His colleague, Maurice Washington, made things a little more clear: “Let’s shake it up. I’m on the way out anyway,” he said. 

Really? So that means he wouldn’t shake it up if he weren’t on the way out anyway?

Attention lawmakers: If you have honest political convictions or personal beliefs that you keep to yourself for fear that — if they were expressed — you’d lose your seat, you can stop looking for the coward in the room. Because that coward is you!

Now before you hit us with the whole whining argument that you can’t do any good for anybody if you’re out of office, and that you have to play to the electorate to be able to advance your agenda, listen to this: If you consider holding public office more important than what you do with that office, you’re unqualified to hold the seat in the first goddamn place.

It shouldn’t be rare that we hear politicians declare some issue to be “more important than my election or my office.” That’s the point of politics: Men and women of conviction rise to share their vision of what government should be about, and the electorate responds by installing somebody with whom they agree. That’s called leadership. And the flip side of that coin is that the lawmaker, so entrusted by the public, actually works to do what he or she promised to do on the campaign trail.

Instead, and with some notable exceptions, we have a bunch of pussies trying to figure out just what to say to appeal to the broadest possible group. They get into office and try to do the least damage possible while carrying water for their special interest friends who enable them to hold office in the first place. The political football moves roughly between the two parties respective 40-yard lines on almost everything, and banks, casinos, miners, developers and Chambers of Commerce really run the state.

It’s why we have a state budget that’s so fucked up. It’s why we have a massive unfunded liability in the retired state workers health-care fund. It’s why we have a tax system that’s so fucked up. It’s why gay marriage is against the law in this state, but drunken marriage for kicks is A-OK. It’s why most every candidate we see looks, sounds and smells just like the legion who have come before and the legion who will come after.

C’mon, people. If we have to wait for term limits to kick in to get real leadership, we’re in deep trouble. Let’s try doing it now and seeing what happens, shall we?

It would be a great day if the worst thing wasn’t a legislator who couldn’t run again, but rather a legislator who had the courage of his convictions on day one, and every day thereafter, no matter when election time came around.

We happened to visit Harrah’s on Tuesday to speak to a group of local officials about the state’s Open Meeting Law, public records laws and the like. And of course, being us, we just had to investigate reports that Harrah’s was no longer carrying copies of the Review-Journal.

First, let us say that everybody at the hotel was very nice and helpful. In the first gift shop we checked out, there were no newspapers at all. But the clerk helpfully showed us a second shop, where plenty of newspapers were available for purchase.

We spotted the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and more.

But no R-J. So, of course, we asked. No local paper here?

No, the friendly clerks said. No Harrah’s properties were carrying it.

Why? we asked.

Some dispute with the paper, was the reply. It will probably be back once everything gets worked out.

The “dispute” of course is the fact that the R-J has done a series of reports about how Harrah’s Entertainment did all sorts of remodeling projects without bothering to pull permits or get inspections. And, in the course of doing those remodels, guests were exposed to potentially life-threatening situations. The company has worked to fix the rooms and bring them back into compliance with codes.

So Harrah’s seems irked at the R-J, which, is kind of understandable. After all, you don’t want your guests buying the local paper only to read that their room may or may not have been remodeled properly, right? (You know another way to ensure that doesn’t happen? Get permits and remodel according to the law!)

Anyway, we picked up a copy of the New York Times and went about our business.

Oh, one more thing: While the Harrah’s people were super-nice and friendly, the clerks at the Starbuck’s were totally not. Gee, we hate to interrupt your MENSA-level sparkling conversation with fellow employees by, say, asking for a cup of freaking $3.34-cent coffee, but you could at least smile when you tell us that you don’t take the Starbucks card, java wench!

Molly Ball’s interesting piece in the Review-Journal today sets up a direct contradiction between Las Vegas Sands Chairman Sheldon Adelson and his one-time Congress-toy, Tom DeLay. Adelson has testified that he used his influence with DeLay to block a 2001 vote on a non-binding resolution against Beijing’s proposal to host this year’s summer Olympic games. But, according to DeLay spokeswoman Shannon Flaherty, the congressman says that never happened.

“The people who attempt to steal credit or assign blame for congressional actions are a dime a dozen, but the fact is the bill wasn’t going to the floor before any conversation occurred,” Flaherty wrote to Ball via e-mail.

Besides, she says: DeLay didn’t set the floor agenda (that was then-Majority Leader Dick Armey);  the resolution didn’t have a chance to see the light of day because Republican leaders opposed it; it was a non-binding resolution that wouldn’t have had any legal effect anyway; and DeLay himself wasn’t big on China and actually co-sponsored the resolution.

But Sands President Bill Weidner — based on Adelson’s conversation with DeLay — had the company’s lobbyists call the Chinese embassy and tell them that Adelson had helped kill the bill, for which the Chinese were “grateful.” (Flaherty told Ball that DeLay “had no recollectio of whether or not a phone call occurred; we’d guess that it probably did.)

So here’s an idea: What if both Adelson and DeLay are telling the truth? (Yeah, we know, the words “DeLay” and “truth” rarely appear in the same sentence, unless it also includes the words “wouldn’t know it if it bit him in his smug ass,” but track with us here.)

What if Adelson called DeLay on behalf of his Chi-Comm buddies, whom he needed to impress to get a casino concession in Macau? And what if DeLay told Adelson — based on his inside knowledge about opposition to the resolution — that it would never come to the floor?

Of course, Adelson would then have conveyed that he’d called DeLay and a few others, strongly implying to the Chinese that he’d helped kill a bill that was doomed from the start anyway. Adelson then looks good, and the Chi-Comms have enough warm feelings to grant him a concession despite rules and hurdles to the contrary. As Flaherty says, he was trying to “steal credit” for an act of Congress to advance his own interests.

The Chinese win, because they get to have their Olympics despite having a human rights record so bad, they shouldn’t even get a game of bridge, much less the Olympics. Adelson wins, because he gets to build a lucrative casino empire in Macau and perhaps elsewhere. DeLay (might have) won, in that Adelson might have repaid his “help” on the resolution with more campaign contributions. Alas, DeLay dropped out of his race for re-election since being indicted on campaign finance charges tends to hurt you politically.

The losers? Only the Chinese people and the late U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, whose sensible anti-Beijing Olympics resolution fell victim to politics that may or may not have involved one of the most corrupt members of Congress in recent memory, DeLay.

It has begun, readers! Poor Democrat Allison Copening is being attacked for having the temerity to take on state Senator Bob Beers in Senate District 6.

A website featuring a picture of Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus has surfaced that purports to be Copening’s official campaign website, but instead is filled with cut-rate sarcasm and mockery. (This is one reason that we suspect Beers himself is not involved in the hijinks; he’s all about the top-shelf sarcasm and mockery.)

We checked into the ownership of the site, but the slippery weasels have managed to hide their slime trail well: The site is registered via a company called “Domains by Proxy Inc.,” which lists an address with a private mail box in Scottsdale, Ariz. Clever bastards!

Anyway, the site makes fun of Copening’s career at KLAS Channel 8, working for a home builder and even includes the unkindest cut of all, a link to a Review-Journal story about former strip club owner Mike Galardi, with whom, of course, she’s had no dealings whatsoever. The website PolitikerNV had a write-up on the flap recently.

For the record, Copening actually has an official website, which you can find here. The good-looking Beers — who is often mistaken for us at Various Things & Stuff — has his official website here. Repeat — Beers is not the guy you see pictured in the panama hat with the cigar to the left!

Gov. Jim Gibbons has declared this week to be National Volunteer Week, which is why we think it’s so totally awesome that first lady Dawn Gibbons is volunteering to be Nevada’s next Republican national committeewoman. A source tells us she’s calling county chairs to gauge  support.

The job is currently held by Beverly Willard, whose term is expiring. If selected at the GOP’s convention this weekend, Dawn Gibbons would have a high-profile role in the party, even if a rumored split with his governorship goes through.

And seriously, why not? In addition to being first lady, Dawn Gibbons has been an elected assemblywoman, successful businesswoman and an anti-meth crusader. She’s perfectly qualified to represent the state at the Republican national convention, and we’re not just saying that because we really don’t care at all if the Republican Party looks foolish.

(This is, after all, the party of John Ensign, who laments that he’s not had time to keep up on his golf game because he’s busy losing Republican Senate seats to the superior skills of New York U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, and whose patron saint is casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who cozies up to Chinese communists to get even richer and who has admitted to popping pain pills to the point he felt like Rip van Winkle. Dawn Gibbons actually makes these guys look good!)

Still, an endorsement from us at Various Things & Stuff might not be the best campaign tactic in a Republican-only race, so we officially oppose Dawn Gibbons for national committeewoman. Hear that, Republicans? We liberal media types would hate for Dawn Gibbons to get elected! Vote against her! She’s icky!

(P.S. Good luck, Dawn!)