Back in June, CityLife reported on the inauspicious beginning of Gov. Jim Gibbons’s Commission on Minority Affairs. With no funding, no staff and, apparently, no idea what they’re doing, the nine new commission members — who replaced the former do-nothing minority commission empaneled back in 2003 — spent their second meeting June 6 in Las Vegas debating. And debating.

Commissioners, who come from each of Nevada’s largest minority communities (Asian, Hispanic, American Indian, black, together comprising 47.5 percent of the state population, according to 2006 census figures), worried out loud that the general public might never learn of the great work they plan to do, when they eventually hope to study the needs of Nevada’s minorities and how to meet them. Also, they wanted business cards.

Well, no word yet on whether commissioners have scored those coveted business cards, but they finally have a website. The information on the site is pretty sparse (there’s no mention yet of their tentatively scheduled Aug. 8 meeting here in Las Vegas), but hey, it’s a better start than their predecessors, who never compiled demographic data to guide policy makers in helping Nevada’s minorities, who never took on entrenched business and government interests, who never did much of anything.

What with all their ideological posturing these past eight years, you’d think Republicans in the U.S. Senate would stay loyal to their party, and to their president, to the end. Uh, not so when faced with losing elections and their own grip on power, turns out.

Could it be that the GOP leadership on the Hill is loosening control over their minions, to allow those imperiled lawmakers to actually vote FOR their constituencies in a last-ditch, white knuckle attempt to fool voters into thinking that 1. Republicans have the people’s best interests at heart and 2. Aren’t soulless cash whores who vote however corporate interests tell them to?

A real test of what’s happening in Washington could come soon as lawmakers take up the oil speculation bill. (Quick aside: Isn’t it tragically comic how little discussion you’ve read in the mainstream media on oil speculation during the past five years? Any of you out there wonder why that is? Any of you wonder why Congress is poised to finally act on speculation, only after you, the people, started waking up to why gasoline costs more than $4 a gallon?)

Also, who wants to bet me that Democrats will also eventually act in this same, reckless fashion once they’ve been in power as long as the Republicans have, long after the media worship of then-President Barack Obama officially crosses over into creepy (if it hasn’t already), long after the same arrogance that afflicted Bush & Co. infects the other side of the aisle - and long after the Democrats’ ideology is shown to be just as vacuous as that of the GOP? Hmmm? Any takers?

(H/t to Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for the art)

Across the valley today, politically and economically aware Las Vegans are celebrating. No, they’re not marking the 63rd anniversary of the explosion of our first experimental atomic bomb in the deserts around Alamogordo, N.M. And no, they’re not congratulating former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh on both his 76th birthday and his willingness to attack his fellow Republicans for the rash of politically motivated prosecutions in the Department of Justice.

Instead, some of them are celebrating July 16 as Cost of Government Day, or the day of the year when we’ve finally earned enough to pay for the wasteful federal, state and local tax burdens placed on us by our government and corporate masters. For years, the nonpartisan Citizens Against Government Waste has cheered this annual emancipation - although they do warn that rising federal spending has pushed Cost of Government Day deeper into the calendar each year. Last year, it was held on July 12. In 2000, Cost of Government Day fell on June 30. These guys at CAGW have a point.

Some might ask what do we Nevadans have to bitch about — at least concerning state tax burdens. We don’t pay state income taxes here, after all. And the state and local taxes we do pay, such as sales tax, property tax and various business taxes, can’t be honestly called a burden, since we take great pride in funding our public and social services at near-Third World levels.

Turn your fire on Washington, some say for your ever-lengthening indentured servitude. Under President George W. Bush, the government has already spent $2.2 trillion so far this federal fiscal year, which end Sept. 30. His spending plans for fiscal 2009? You don’t want to know. (OK, you probably do, so go here.)

Coupled with the tax breaks for the rich that he ushered in years ago (tax breaks which U.S. Sen. John McCain now wants to make permanent - in shades of John Kerry, McCain says he voted against them before he voted for them), the $17.2 billion in federal pork spending (of which our men - and woman - in Washington are responsible for $449.6 million) and the national housing meltdown which administration and Wall Street regulators knowingly allowed, Bush & Co. have left our economy in tatters. As a result of this administration’s efforts, our economy is less stable than a Strip sex crime victim, left addled and sweating on the side of the road while the in-crowd party rolls on through the night.

So, go ahead, Las Vegas! Celebrate Cost of Government Day by going out to the mall and buying yourselves something special. That is, if you can still afford the gas to drive there.

When a newspaper runs a “sting” operation on a legislator whose website is open for campaign donations (as the Las Vegas Review-Journal did to Assemblyman Bob Beers, as reported in the June 28 issue [registration req’d.]), that’s one thing. When R-J crony and professional sorehead George Harris does the same thing on the same day and the R-J obligingly reports it, it looks a bit like coincidence — but not very much.

Beers (R-Henderson), after all, is the conservative legislator — given an 80 percent rating by unofficial GOP talking head Chuck Muth — whose constitutents include a number of Wynn Resorts dealers. When Steve Wynn confiscated those dealers’ tips and redistributed them to pit bosses, Beers went to bat for his constituents. And when neither the courts, the state’s labor commissioner nor Wynn himself would lend a sympathetic ear, Beers urged the dealers to avail themselves of the only recourse left to them: unionization.

To the R-J, whose editorial board sings off of Harris’ hymnal daily, the second-worst thing in the world is taxation (if Jesus Christ abjured them to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, they’d tell Him to render it where the sun shineth not). The worst, the vilest abomination of all, is anything that smacks remotely of organized labor. Ergo, Assemblyman Beers is an apostate who apparently must be smote down. Harris just happens to have issued a fatwa on Beers and is slurping Beers’ primary opponent, Jonathan Ozark, who just happens to have been the recipient of a 2006 R-J endorsement.

Harris’ coy ploy of making a donation so that he could then file an Ethics Commission complaint is not unlike me burglarizing my apartment so I can put in an insurance claim. (Cheap S.O.B. that he apparently is, Harris only “donated” $10, then whined about not getting his money back. Just tell me where to send the check, George, and I’ll reimburse you myself.)

Don’t blame reporter Ed Vogel, who was performing his Fourth Estate duty: Making sure that lawmakers are upholding the very laws they make.

And I don’t think this was some Steve Wynn put-up job, either: If it were, it would be a smooth move, not a Keystone Kops caper.

Harris, however, has very little degree of separation from Stephens Media, of which the R-J is but one tentacle (and City Life another). When the racist rantings of Ken Ward got too hot for the R-J to handle, Ward’s pensées found a new home at Liberty Watch, the vanity publication of one George Harris. And, during the May 2005-May 2007 period, I can personally attest that Liberty Watch was regularly and aggressively distributed at Stephens’ satellite office, near McCarran Airport — a courtesy that was not extended to any, say, Greenspun Media publication that I can recall.

No one of which proves a conspiracy. But there’s every appearance of a too-cozy Harris/R-J relationship and you’ve got to wonder if either would go to the same lengths if the lapsed legislator in question were their anti-tax, anti-union darling, Sen. Bob Beers. Color me skeptical.–David McKee

Investigative reporters don’t come any more talented than Seymour Hersh. His ground-breaking, hard-hitting pieces have clarified the reporting in a host of American newspapers and journals, from his uncovering of the My Lai Massacre in 1969 to his in-depth coverage of Abu Ghraib in 2004.

Since 2005, Hersh has repeatedly written about the Bush administration’s covert preparations for an eventual war with Iran, including revelations that American troops have repeatedly been on the ground there in recent years.

Hersh’s latest piece in The New Yorker, published earlier this week, fleshes out further the best-laid bellicose plans of Bush & Co. to create a situation in which war with Tehran would be inevitable. The revelations in the piece further illustrate how a host of covert, so-called black ops missions in the Middle East have left American uniformed generals with the fear that our own military might be losing control of the situation.

White House talking heads have taken great pains in recent years to deny many of Hersh’s assertions, which are always based on interviews with sterling sources inside America’s war machine. His latest piece is further evidence that you can rarely trust the geopolitical coverage you read in the mainstream media.

Housing crisis! State budget in flames! Education funding slashed! An oblivious, text-obsessed governor! Must be nice to be the Southern Nevada Water Authority, and live in a placid realm of monied abstraction.

Yes, while the rest of are eating cheese sandwiches and wincing with every squeeze of the gas pump, the water authority is rolling in le dough. Check out this week’s Knappster for the full scoop. Why, they’re so cloyed by their vast piles of slutty gold, they’re being forced to entertain themselves by spending it on things like cubicle etiquette consultants and seminars on — there’s no other way to put this, so I’ll snip straight from the consultant’s newsletter — “living in a green building.”

Dunno about you, but our mother always taught us that a blind grab for rural water, endangering countless species and gambling with environmental catastrophe is bad etiquette.

The folks at the Great Basin Water Network are complaining that the Southern Nevada Water Authority has pulled a sneaky legal maneuver to bar water-grab opponents access to a July 15 conference in Carson City. That’s where the state engineer will determine who gets to say what both for and against the authority’s bid to tap groundwater in Snake Valley, which straddles Nevada and Utah. Pipeline opponents fear, however, that authority is already stacking the deck in its own favor, as it’s seeking to muzzle foes of the water grab:

Groups and individuals that would be affected by the water-exportation scheme have asked the Nevada State Engineer to be considered “Interested Persons” in the upcoming hearings on the issue. But SNWA has taken legal action in an attempt to bar many of those who would be most affected from participating in the hearing, which will determine how much water, if any, the agency can take from the valley.

The issue of participation is critically important to thousands of people who for various reasons could not formally protest SNWA’s applications to take the water when were filed nearly two decades ago, but who would be significantly harmed by the water exportation. Fourteen organizations and individuals have sought Interested Party status, including the Salt Lake and Utah County governments, a regional water authority representing eight rural Nevada counties, two Shoshone tribes and the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation (Goshute Tribe).

But that’s the only arrow in the quiver when the science isn’t on your side: Gag the opposition.

U.S. Sen. John McCain went full-speed ahead yesterday in fleshing out his evolving national energy policies in front of the Las Vegas Republican faithful. But when a CityLife reporter tried to call him on his bullshit, the conductor of the Straight Talk Express quickly slammed on the brakes.

Decrying our national addiction to foreign oil and the looming specter of global warming, McCain crowed at UNLV yesterday morning about why his new energy policies are vital to national security, about his call for 45 new nuclear plants by 2030 and about how tax incentives help spawn alternative fuel development. He forgot to mention he missed two votes in December 2007 that would have extended tax credits to renewable energies like solar power, a burning business in the Silver State.

When a CityLife reporter tried to corner McCain later that afternoon at his shiny, new campaign headquarters in Henderson, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee turned on his heel, hiding behind a wall of hulking, Secret Service flesh. It went like this: “Senator, how can you come to Nevada and talk about responsible energy policy, when your national co-chairman and chief economic adviser, former Texas senator Phil Gramm and his wife, Wendy, helped push through energy deregulation, which, in turn, led directly to the Enron meltdown and to Nevada Power’s record profits since 2000?”

His smile and outstretched hand dropped, as he, almost intuitively, began working other, more faithful swaths of the crowd. Later, as the same reporter went outside to wait for him by his Secret Service motorcade, McCain snuck out a side door, avoiding those pesky members of the press who might want to ask him more stuff.

Senator, if you ever have the balls to head back to Vegas, I’ll be there, waiting. You’ll be able to spot me by my notepad, my sense of righteous indignation … and my brand-new Phil Gramm T-shirt.

In the wake of former Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s 323-page book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, one former member of the president’s own military team says he also believes the president should be indicted for war crimes (Read CityLife editor Steve Sebelius’ review of Bugliosi’s book here).

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, in the preface to a newly released report, Broken Laws, Broken Lives (for the group Physicians for Human Rights), writes that, ” … the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individuals’ lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors.”

Taguba isn’t just some salty old soldier spewing sour grapes over petty slights. This is the same two-star general whom Bush tapped to initially investigate the systemic prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib - and the general says he’s shocked by what he uncovered at the prison. The report is heavy with medical evidence that appears to confirm first-hand accounts of 11 former prisoners tortured by U.S. soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. Even more shocking? In the wake of the Abu Ghraib, just two enlisted Army reservists, one active-duty dog handler and an Army captain have been prosecuted for their role in the prisoner abuse. To date, no general officers, and no ranking field commanders have faced charges, despite the common knowledge among service members that the OK for the abuse, as is standard Army practice, came from the top.

Taguba writes, “There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

If other leaders had as much chutzpah as Taguba, perhaps we wouldn’t have to rely on the above doctored photo to accompany our piece. We’d have full-color evidence that the American legal system isn’t rigged to protect the rich and powerful, after all. We’d have, in a word, justice. A right those detainees in American custody never enjoyed.

Ahem.

George Carlin and Las Vegas were always an odd pairing: A cynical truth-teller playing to crowds seeking escape from the truth. Who’d've thought that combo would feed a long and fruitful relationship that spanned decades? While Carlin knew as well as anyone that the seats in Las Vegas were filled with casual, fair-weather fans, he still had a wry fondness for the city. Here’s a CityLife interview from August previewing the late comedian’s last Vegas performance.

Leave it to CityLife Managing Editor Andrew Kiraly to sniff out the one Las Vegas subculture whose favorite pasttime could slash health care costs while mitigating the effects of global warming.

Back in April, Kiraly’s piece on fixed-gear bike enthusiasts had many of us pondering both the novelty of the group, as well as how we’d fare spinning alongside these bad asses who laugh at the idea of braking. Turns out, we could all learn a lot from these freewheelers. According to a study just out from the Australian government, cycling helps reduce annual health care costs by up to $227.2 million Australia Dollars ($214.4 USD). Other benefits include less traffic congestion, which saves our cousins down under $63.9 million AUD ($60.3 million USD) in new road construction and tons of greenhouse gas emission that would otherwise cost $9.3 million AUD ($8.8 million USD) to clean up each year.

These quantifiable findings confirm what we’ve heard anecdotally for years: that a healthier populace produces real economic returns. Granted, many Las Vegans won’t like this study, considering that the Centers for Disease Control and the American Obesity Association found Sin City ranked as the nation’s ninth fattest city back in 2005 (the most recent year for which these data are available). Still, we can’t help wondering how much smaller the gaping hole in our state budget would be were we to able to slash state health care spending by such large sums. Could forsaking our cars, killing our televisions and mashing our fat asses into some spandex benefit every tax payer? Could it be that the answers to our most pressing problems actually start with us?

Columnist Chip Mosher writes:

On his Web site, Teachers4change.net, Clark County School District teacher and school board candidate Ron Taylor recently posted the story of a high school senior allegedly giving oral sex this past Spring to an adult hall monitor in the school library — apparently just boning up for proficiency exams. According to Taylor, who interviewed several people close to the “hush-hush” investigation, this 18-year-old senior initially refused to talk to authorities about the incident. But, following threats from the school’s administration that she would not be allowed to graduate if she remained quiet, the young girl finally coughed up the goods. And the hall monitor was “immediately fired.”

However, according to Taylor’s sources, this same hall monitor had been fired from another local high school in the past for “doing the same thing.” On his website Taylor posited: “He (the hall monitor) was not charged then and wasn’t charged now so the question remains — will he be at another high school next year?”

It is against the law for a teacher not to report suspected abuse. Thus, after being alerted to the situation, Taylor, who teaches at another school, says, “Basically, the thing I was lookin’ at was there was a student being victimized. And I, as a teacher, wanted to make sure she was protected by the district.”

In his search for the truth, then, Taylor says he ran into some closed doors and tight lips. After taking the story to three different units of the school district police for action, the frustrated Taylor says he eventually received a phone call from the reported school’s principal, who was angry with some of the wording on Taylor’s website, especially about the principal “covering up a sex scandal.”

Interestingly, Taylor’s incendiary article was replaced shortly thereafter with a kinder, gentler version of the tale. In his first version, Taylor states (about the girl’s graduation), “The principal assured the mother that her daughter would graduate. (But) The girl’s teachers posted their grades and she failed several classes. (And) The principal went into the grading program and changed (these) grades. The teachers became aware of (these) changes so they… changed them back.”

In the second, modified version, Taylor backtracks a bit by quoting the principal, who says (according to Taylor): “I changed the grades because I felt the grade was unjustified.”

To which Taylor (apologetically?) editorializes: “This doesn’t sound like a deal was made with any of the parties.”

Really? Young student gives hummer to adult hall monitor in school library. They get caught. Girl won’t talk. Girl is told she won’t graduate if she doesn’t talk. Girl talks. Girl fails at least one course. Principal changes her grade(s) to passing. Girl reportedly graduates.

Because she passed her oral exams?

You be the judge. A coincidence? Perhaps. Yet in all of this, two things keep surfacing that, according to Taylor, don’t seem disputable. First, an adult hall monitor got a blow-job from a student in a local high school library. Second, this (now formerly) hall monitor might still be running the streets of Las Vegas — with our children. Maybe hoping to work at a new school next year — if not here, then elsewhere. Just lookin’ for some head. But don’t tell anyone. It’s a school district secret.

Hm. Interesting story in the Sun today asking, gee, why is coughtooexpensive Streamline Tower only half-sold coughtooexpensive? Could it be that desire to live downtown hasn’t reached coughtooexpensive critical mass yet? Naw, the collective fauxhawkian desire is coughtooexpensive definitely throbbing at max levels.

Could it be that bobos are a-scared of being in the “ghetto”? Naw, anyone who’s set a babydolled foot on East Fremont in the last year knows it’s coughtooexpensive tidied up considerably.

Could it be that, oh, maybe coughtooexpensive intractable high- and mid-rise developers who were hoping to ride the coattails of the housing boom coughtooexpensive overplayed their hand coughtooexpensive and now are feverishly praying that interest in downtown miraculously overtakes coughtooexpensive a slumpy economy and that coughtooexpensive young urbanites suddenly — also miraculously — start pulling down high five-figure salaries that will convince a skittish lender to qualify them for a coughtooexpensive overpriced condo overlooking a downtown-in-progress so the developers can get their creditors off their backs?

Achootooexpensive. Excuse me!

Circa March 2007:

Jim Gibbons: sup

Kathy Karrasch: nm u

Gibbons: chillaxn w a juice box so u horny 2nite

Karrasch: lol wut is chillaxn

Gibbons: nm–hey dawn is goin to some meth thing 2nite want to hookup ill be alone finle

Karrasch: not sure yet k

Gibbons: she bought a palett of cool ranch doritos at sams club i know u like them plus america got talent is on. if i can get an extension cord we can watch it from the spa. plus there a wine cooler left seagrams i think–u like berry splash?

Karrasch: dont have swim trunks

Gibbons: even better lol

Karrasch: nasty boy

Gibbons: lol want 2 c u bad

Karrasch: me 2 but i have a ?

Gibbons: im wearing nuthin but socks right now if thats wut u want 2 know hehe

Karrasch: lol not that

Gibbons: the fancy blk ones w garters

Karrasch: gross be serious for a sec

Gibbons: wuts the ? then

Karrasch: do u think theres a way to trim the state budget n be fiscally responsible w out cutting mental health sys and schools even higher ed– cuz wut i was thnking is wut u do is first stabilize housing market fall w mortgage aid plan cuz then ppl stay in their homes and banks get paid. then u push for mining tax reform so its taxed equably w other industries. plus mebbe in 2009 session casinos n u can work with new democrat-controlled legislature to finally get business tax thru since they will have shown they cd work together w teacher union already so they wont b weird abt it– just a thought babe

Karrasch: hey

Karrasch: u there

Gibbons: yes u horny yet

Karrasch: n was also thnkng u cd easily segue in2 that with grace commission so yr political credibility wdnt be hurt –cmon baby think abt it

Gibbons: hold on oh damn g2g

Karrasch: u there

Karrasch: hey

Karrasch: ?