More reasons to be thankful it's late December Dave Barry's year-ender is out. Monday, Dave participated in an online chat via The Washington Post. The transcript is here . Money question/answer: Washington, D.C.: PC or Mac? Dave Barry: I have both. That is the kind of cyberstud I am. I like them both for different reasons: The Mac beacause of the terrific design and ease of use, and the PC because I enjoy talking to the fun guys 'n' gals at Technical Support. Rewriting the rules? USA Today's fairly evenhanded cover story on blogs (primarily political ones) overlooks some of the bigger players but doesn't overstate the importance of the phenomenon, either.
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It's blo-o-g, It's blo-o-o-g, it's big, it's heavy, it's wood ... Much belated here, but this fine publication gets a "thumbs up" from Las Vegas Weekly columnist Richard Abowitz in a Nov. 26 review of blogs by local journalists. Abowitz didn't have much good to say about many of them, save those from Las Vegas City Life writer Mike Zigler and me. For some odd reason, the column is not available on the Weekly's Web site, so through the magic of typing, here's a bit of shameless self-promotion: My favorite blog comes from Rick Henderson. Like Zigler, Henderson offers in his blog an opinionated, behind-the-scenes account of political events in Nevada. But Henderson's blog abandons the personal entirely [ well, kinda ... ed. ] in favor of a far more comprehensive take on every issue that has made the local papers. Where Zigler dedicates a few sentences to his impression of Dean [during his fall campaign stop in Las Vegas], Henderson analyzes...
I'm a seer (unfortunately) In this week's column , Review-Journal Editor Tom Mitchell recalls something I wrote prior to the opening of the legislative session about budget deficits and public employee compensation ... about how the former could be eliminated if the latter were brought under control ... and how that would happen the time pigs start flying. From today's column: Sure enough, there was not a peep during the session about public employee salaries, which Henderson reported are on average one-third again higher than those in the private sector in Nevada, or the defined-benefit retirement package that allows public employees to retire decades earlier than private workers and with pensions exponentially higher than anyone on Social Security could ever dream of, with or without wild avarice. ... It is as solid as a law of nature: When money comes from the tax larder, there is no shame, no limit, no end. Those who have followed the news reports in the Review-Journal...
Lovely spam, wonderful spam If you think the anti-spam bill George Bush signed will reduce the unsolicited e-mails in your in-box, just read this well-argued policy piece from the November Reason. Or this killer profile of Bill Waggoner, the "spam king," from Sunday's Review-Journal: Waggoner is a single father, a guitar-playing metalhead and the boyfriend of a topless dancer. He's also a raconteur, a staunch political conservative and a conspiracy theorist with his own Internet radio show. A tangle of contradictions, he's a devotee of alternative medicine and all-natural products who smokes two packs a day. ... But Waggoner isn't just any spam king. He might be the most hated in the world. Just ask the subculture of anti-spam computer buffs from San Francisco to London who have battled him for five years in the war to stop the wildfirelike spread of spam. This army of tech geeks has a special antipathy for Waggoner because, unlike other spammers, he doesn...
Triumph of hope over experience It's not so surprising that liberal editorialists, who are incapable of distinguishing between corruption and corruptibility, might shrug off, or even celebrate, the McCain-Feingold ruling. The same with politcians, who benefit from its limits on competitive races, and good-government types, who hate the process of campaigning anyway. (Maybe we should dispense with elective office entirely and simply appoint bureaucrats to rule our lives.) What's more puzzling is the lack of outrage by responsible liberals such as Mickey Kaus , who (second item) is not "wildly upset" by the decision. Why? Because It doesn't prevent rich (and non-rich) individuals from banding together to spend as much money as they want on "independent" last-minute issue" ads that criticize or praise candidates by name--something that I'd argue is their right. It only bans them if they incorporate. Of course, a future Congress or court could do aw...
A futile and stupid gesture The Review-Journal's take on the campaign-reform decision (with quotes from Animal House !). Just curious: Has anyone put together an editorial-page scorecard on the ruling? Sure, the mammoth, lefty, establishment papers that Congress exempted from the law (for now, as Justice Thomas noted) cooed about the decision, but I'm not seeing much institutional concern from any papers other than those identified with "the right" over it. Very sad, very shortsighted, and very cynical.
Plain-speaking cowboy Love him or loathe him, when he was in Congress, Wyoming's Alan Simpson was always entertaining, almost a throwback to the days senators and representatives nearly (or actually) came to blows in the halls of Capitol Hill. Well, the big guy's at it again, according to this Washington Post story (third item) about Simpson's activity with the Republican Unity Coalition , a "big tent" GOP group. When the "famously anti-gay" Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., formally protested Simpson's support of the gay marriage court ruling in Massachusetts, with a letter from pastor Fred W. Phelps urging the construction of a monument in Cheyenne featuring the biblical admonition against homosexuality, Simpson fired back with this response: I just wanted to alert you to the fact that some dizzy shit is sending out mailings and e-mails from the Westboro Baptist Church -- and using your name! I'm certain that you would not want this to ...
Zevon gets five Warren Zevon tallies five Grammy nominations , including Best Contemporary Folk (??) Album for The Wind. I'd be surprised if he doesn't capture at least one award, though, face it, folks, were Zevon still alive and well, he'd never have gotten a second thought from the nominating crowd. On the other hand, we can only hope the Oscar nominations mirror those of the film-oriented Grammys. If so, we'll see The Folksmen, et al., performing the theme to " A Mighty Wind " come Feb. 29.
Meet Freddy The newest member of the household. He's named for my dad Fred, and we adopted him from the Las Vegas Valley Humane Society on Nov. 15, when he was eight weeks old. He's 100% boy, rambunctuous but completely affectionate. He also has a keen sense of smell (which Willow totally lacks), so cooking the turkey and stuffing and dealing with the leftovers has been an adventure. He sleeps with us on the bed and is completely at home. He and Willow chase each other around the house ... when they aren't curled up together asleep. We think we'll keep him.
Why newspapers remain important Sources tell the Review-Journal that Wendell Williams will be fired from the city of Las Vegas, perhaps as early as today. His former supervisor, Sharon Segerblom, will be allowed to keep her job, which is only appropriate. Segerblom couldn't really discipline Williams without the support of the city higher-ups who kept giving him raises and promotions (including former Mayor Jan Jones, who encouraged the city to get as many employees in the Legislature as possible), even as he was violating policies and breaking laws. Had the Review-Journal (and a much lesser extent, the Sun -- or, more to the point, Jon Ralston) failed in their relentless pursuit of the facts in this case, Williams would have not only kept his job, but quite possibly continued up the city hierarchy, landing lifetime patronage posts for a lot more people than his "special friend," Topazia Jones. This is the type of story that TV just can't nail. It requires weaving di...
Wha' happen? Not a lot, actually, in Tuesday's City Council meeting on the Wendell Williams fiasco. City Manager Doug Selby kept his job, which means that that Williams' city position is probably safe now as well, since Selby devised Williams' "last chance" deal. (The deal clearly upset Mayor Oscar Goodman, but not enough for him to recommend that Selby get the ax.) Goodman did an OK job as the prosecuting attorney, if you will, interrogating Williams, the city auditor and other employees who reviewed Williams' time records. Goodman eventually conceded that, since the council lacked the authority to compel sworn testimony from people who don't work for the city, and several of the key players in this melodrama aren't on the city payroll, the council couldn't determine who was telling the truth. Did Williams falsify time records in violation of city policy? Or were his time cards filled out for him by others, as he claimed Tuesday ... and was t...
A big week for Las Vegas ... or not Tuesday, the Las Vegas City Council will consider the fates of Wendell Williams, his former supervisor at the Department of Neighborhood Services Sharon Segerblom and potentially City Manager Doug Selby and Deputy Manager Betsy Fretwell. Mayor Oscar Goodman told my colleague Steve Sebelius (link forthcoming): "I want Tuesday to be the day Las Vegas acquits itself." Good luck, your honor. Williams has become the Neutron Bomb of Nevada: He kills careers but leaves institutions standing. Barely. Friday, he claimed that, in exchange for getting a promotion from the city, he shepherded a bill through the 2001 Legislature which annexed territory into Las Vegas, increasing its tax base. No one else agrees with that accounting, because if it's true, this is tantamount to extortion, which could ensnare Goodman, former City Manager Virginia Valentine, and a host of other current and former city employees in the dragnet. The threat here from Will...
Radio silence after all Turns out I won't be on KNPR Monday, as the program was "overscheduled," from the voicemail message host Gwen Castaldi left at work for me early today. At the time, I was a bit suspicious. After all, the show's producer seemed somewhat frantic to make sure all four panelists were booked on Thursday afternoon. Let's recap: The topic is the federal Hatch Act (which bans people who work for agencies that use federal funds from engaging in partisan politics) and local politicians who may be affected by it. The panelists were: Assembly Speaker and Henderson Deputy Police Chief Richard Perkins, who's been told by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel he's violating the Hatch Act and must either resign his job with the police or not file for re-election next year (he's now appealing that decision); Knight Allen, a local government watchdog who's a trenchant critic of profligate spending, abuse of public power and all things righteous ...
Radio silence Not really, folks. I'll be on KNPR, 88.9 FM, Monday the 24th from 9 -10 a.m. Pacific time discussing the federal Hatch Act, separation of powers and other line-blurring issues in Nevada's civil service with host Gwen Castaldi. The program is called KNPR's State of Nevada, and one of the other guests will be Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, who's the subject of a Hatch Act inquiry related to his regular job as a deputy police chief in Henderson. If you live outside Southern Nevada, streaming audio is available on KNPR's Web site here . Tune in. It keeps growing, and growing ... The House of Representatives votes 264-163 to expand the ability of the feds to snoop into your personal finances without judicial oversight ... all as a part of the war on terror. Las Vegas will become a key player in this matter (as it has been in an earlier financial privacy brouhaha), because, as the AP reports, The bill's provisions affecting financial records will ex...
Separation issues My most recent feature story on how the Nevada constitution clearly bans public employees from sitting in the Legislature (notwithstanding the fact that 14 of the 63 members served two masters this year) is here . Warning: It's long, and includes abstract principles and dead white guys.
The Patriot Act and 'little platoons' Yet another insidious feature of the USA Patriot Act, from today's Review-Journal : It forces banks to pry into the private financial dealings of people who serve in voluntary associations -- the "little platoons" celebrated by de Tocqueville (and later, Charles Murray) that make America a wonderfully compassionate, dynamic society; the law also requires the banks to share that information with John Ashcroft's Big Platoon aka the U.S. Justice Department. This is the story of Las Vegas resident Rebecca Foster, who offered to serve on the board of her homeowners association and discovered that the bank controlling the association's accounts demanded the dates of birth, Social Security and driver's license numbers for anyone who had check-signing privileges. From the story: The personal information was necessary, the bank said in the Aug. 27 letter, "to look for any derogatory banking information" and "...
Strike a blow for freedom; drink zin ... or cab, or viognier, or .... Had a splendid time at the Reason anniversary banquet and education conference, which was, as Virginia Postrel said, like old home week. I always enjoy catching up with old friends and associates and making new ones. Congrats again for 35 wonderful years. I'm not a big advocate of "social investing," but I do like to support businesses that offer quality products and are at least slightly sympathetic to my philosophical leanings. That's why I was cheered to examine the list of the banquet's sponsors and find Cline Cellars and Babcock Winery included. As a cheap wino, I've enjoyed Cline's value-priced zins for years (they make excellent higher-end wines, too). I'm less familiar with Babcock's line, but we're big fans of Santa Ynez pinots and syrahs, and the red table wine that evening from Babcock was excellent. Support these fine folks who are willing to part with some of t...
Happy 35th I'll be in L.A. Wednesday to attend Reason magazine's 35th anniversary party. It's difficult for me to believe that I worked at Reason for more than one-fourth of its existence. It'll be a fine time. Earlier that day, I'll be covering a Reason Public Policy Institute conference on education reform, organized by my friend Lisa Snell, who worked for me in Washington, D.C., as a summer intern a few years ago before getting hired full-time by Reason. Now she does a great job directing education studies for RPPI. Check out Lisa's blog . No chance for abuse? Debates have raged in blogdom and elsewhere over the USA Patriot Act -- whether it's a legitimate extension of federal power in the wake of the 9/11 attacks or an invitation to abuse our constitutional rights. Consider me clearly in the latter camp. Today's Review-Journal reported that the Las Vegas FBI used an obscure provision of the act to collect financial info on the targets of its polit...
The Dean implosion Howard, Dean, M.D., made a fund-raising trip to Las Vegas Tuesday and, as usual, pandered to the locals. This time the erstwhile booster of the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump turned evasive, claiming he had "seen the light" on the issue -- meaning? Before deciding whether to ship the nation's nuke waste to Nevada, he'd make sure the site was safe. Which is indistinguishable from the "unconscionable position of the Bush administration on Yucca. Or is it? As my buddy Steve Sebelius points out in his column (link TK), Dean has been tight with the nuke power industry for years, and actually pushed to greenlight a low-level nuke dump in Texas that was eventually rejected on -- wait for it -- scientfic grounds. (His backing of the project, which would have been located in the poor, Hispanic town of Sierra Blanca, led some anti-nuke activists to accuse Dean of environmental racism.) Whatever your view on Yucca, Tuesday's spectacle is yet another ex...
The Marlins win the pennant! The Marlins win the pennant! Cagey, 72-year-old grandfather Jack McKeon and his kids defeat the storied Yankees ... in the Bronx. Best postgame moment: At his press conference, somebody asks Josh Beckett about his strategy in pitfching to Derek Jeter, and Becketts says, "I can't believe we're talking about this shit." Indeed. Terrific postseason. Congratulations. Pleas, pleas, pleas Strip club owner Michael Galardi, who's knee deep in indictments related to the political scandals in San Diego and Las Vegas, enters a guilty plea to FBI agents here in Sin City. Reports say that, in exchange for his cooperation, Galardi will pay a fine (or forfeit) $4 million and serve no more than five years in prison. And that's separate from the San Diego side of the scandal. If that's the sort of penalty the guy gets for cooperating, he must have some juicy details to share ... and the local targets of the investigation should be plenty worri...
Booby Hatch Another week, another scandal involving Nevada elected officials. This time, it seems to be rampant violations by state lawmakers of the federal Hatch Act. The New Deal-era law prohibits federal employees (and most state and local workers whose agencies receive federal funding) from participating in partisan politics. The act was originally designed to prevent low-level federal employees from being dragooned into campaign-related grunt work by political appointee bosses. More recently, it's become way to (potentially) de-politicize local bureaucracies. The chief violator here is Nevada Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, who moonlights as a deputy chief at the Henderson Police Department. Or maybe it's the other way around. Anyway, in response to a complaint by local government vexer Knight Allen, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel ruled that Perkins can't be an assemblyman and a cop (Henderson gets several million bucks from D.C. each year) at the same time. Perk...
If you want to know what kind of person Wendell Williams really is ... Check out the lede to this story in Friday's Las Vegas Sun: Assemblyman Wendell Williams went on television to clear his name Thursday. When he pulled into the lot at Las Vegas ONE, he parked his silver BMW in a marked handicapped spot. It didn't get much better after that ... Read the whole thing here .
Re-call-ifornia Mickey Kaus , Roger Simon , and Dan Weintraub , get it right: Democrats who dismiss this election as either an aberration or the consequences of a right-wing plot do so at their own peril. The recall was a complete repudiation of the politics of tax/spend/regulate/pander. Dems who don't acknowledge this, or who try to vent their anger via obstructionism or threats of further recalls may be marginalized. I wish I had Simon's optimism. On MSNBC, Jill Stewart said she had heard that the network affiliates in California's major population centers actually planned to re-open their Sacramento bureaus. The fact that these stations ignored the capital in the first place is an outrage of the first order. But even though the Schwarzenegger administration might not exactly appreciate all that additional scrutiny, if the stations commit serious people and resources to reporting state politics, Californians will be the winners. Don't hold your breath, though. Launchi...
Wendell's woes Nevada's most embarrassing political year in recent memory just gets more seamy. No local indictments have been issued in the Operation G-Sting, the strip club scandal that has roiled the political establishment in San Diego -- three members of the city council have been indicted , and former Clark County Commissioner Lance Malone, now a strip club lobbyist, has dragged Las Vegas on stage, as it were. Not yet, anyway. But if Knappster is right, a host of prominent Vegsa business and political leaders may soon have reservations at Club Fed. Then we have Wendell Williams. The nine-term assemblyman from North Las Vegas has constantly been at odds with the Review-Journal's editorial board on philosophical grounds; Williams is cut from the cloth of the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton civil rights establishment, promulgating racial preferences and other policies that expand the welfare state -- an agenda which rejects educational choice, genuine neighborhood-level decis...
Post-debate obesevations If I'm George Bush, I'm breathing a lot easier today. The Democrats have failed to exorcise the spirit of FDR, let alone Fritz Mondale. Wealth is evil, "rich" people don't work, Social Security is sacrosanct (Gen Xers, bend over), and central planning is the answer to all our national ills. Among the candidates, only John Kerry appeared to be sufficiently serious and thoughtful to pose any threat to a second Bush term. Edwards, Sharpton, and Moseley-Braun were nonentities, Kucinich was frightening, Graham was just silly, waving his "economic plan." Clark was presentable but boring, and offered nothing of substance; he had to be cornered before he would offer a simple yes-or-no answer to the question about letting individuals invest some of their payroll taxes in the capital markets (he's agin' it). Dean and Gephardt should have scared the bejeezus out of the investor class, and anyone whose livelihood depends on trade and...
Old journalism and "censoring" blogs A little perspective on the controversy raging over the SacBee's concession that it is editing (or censoring, depending on your perspective) the blog it sponsors featuring great stuff from political columnist Dan Weintraub: The Bee has taken legitimate shots from Mickey Kaus , Glenn Reynolds , Hugh Hewitt and others, because (in part) of the paper's weak-kneed concessions to political correctness. The Bee's ombudsman has admitted that Weintraub's submissions were subject to review after receiving complaints from the Latino caucus of the state Legislature about this post: If [the California Lt. Governor's] name had been Charles Bustmont rather than Cruz Bustamante, he would have finished his legislative career as an anonymous back-bencher. Thus there is reason to wonder how he would handle ethnic issues as governor. And while people can debate forever whether MEChA and its more virulent cousins do or do not advocate e...
Court to Constitution: Drop dead (and we really mean it this time) In a decision that would make the 9th Circuit proud, the Nevada Supreme Court refuses to reconsider its July 10 decision setting aside the state's supermajority requirement for tax increases. In an interminable 30+ page ruling that reads less like a reasoned legal argument than a bad undergraduate poli sci paper, the majority argued that a) tax increases were necessary to fund education and b) the 2/3 supermajority amendment was probably invalid because voters didn't understand that the mandate would make it difficult to operate the government effectively during tough times. (This, notwithstanding the fact that more than 70 percent of the voters supported the initiative in separate elections and both sides got plenty of air time and column inches to make their case.) The court did not, however, take the logical next step and strike down the supermajority requirement. As far as I can tell, logic played absolutely...
The Las Vegas Expos? Don't be daft My colleague Norm! Clarke, the Review-Journal's gossip columnist, broke the story ( here -- check "Sightings" -- and here ) that Major League Baseball has opened high-level negotiations with parties who hope to make Las Vegas a possible destination for the Montreal Expos. Mayor Oscar Goodman, casting about as always to find something, anything that might revitalize his bedraggled downtown, is all aflutter. But back to reality. As much as I would love to have a big league ballclub playing a half-hour or so from my home, I'm convinced this is a ploy by MLB, using Las Vegas as a bargaining chip to extort a higher franchise fee out of the eventual owners in Washington or Portland (or Montreal, for that matter). In no particular order of significance, here are several reasons we won't get a major league franchise: Gambling. Every time talks of bringing big league sports to Las Vegas are initiated, they go nowhere, because so lon...
Dodging the raindrops Back from nine days in North Carolina, eight of them on the coast, where we experienced perhaps 4 hours of sun ... until it was time to head for the airport yesterday, of course. But as my friend Roger Waldon said, there's no such thing as a crappy day on the beach. I saw the Carolina Tar Heels lose a 49-47 triple-overtime football game to Syracuse; played cards with my Chapel Hill poker buds (and my second college roommate); frolicked in the surf for 90 minutes; ate shrimp burgers and oyster burgers; and enjoyed the absence of Internet access and 24-hour cable news. More sunshine would have improved the trip. It was nice to return to the desert. BTW, the link to my column on The Substance of Style , published while we were on the East Coast, is here . While you were out Warren Zevon, Johnny Cash and John Ritter died. John Edwards may have guaranteed an additional Senate seat for the GOP, though the jobless recovery has taken a psychological toll on my home s...
The Look and Feel of the Atlantic Ocean Light blogging lately, as we prepare for a 10-day trip to the East Coast ... literally. We'll spend much of the time at the North Carolina beaches, where we probably won't have Internet access. So I'll plug a column by me that will appear in Sunday's Review-Journal on the connections between Las Vegas and the theme of my friend Virginia Postrel 's wonderful new book The Substance of Style . The Web link to the column will go up after we depart, so to find it, go to the Review-Journal's Web site Sunday, click on Opinion, and look for either my byline or the title of the piece ("Look and feel and Las Vegas"). And by all means, buy this book.
Did socialism kill in France? Virginia Postrel posts here and here on how France's socialism (must ... take ... vacation ... in ... August ... even ... if ... grandma ... broils) likely contributed to the heat-related death toll. Virginia also offers a wise disclaimer: "I was not referring to the French health care system, which I know little about, but to the general structure of society, economy, and government." But it's possible the health care system was culpable for some of those deaths, as this op-ed by Grace-Marie Turner of the free-market Galen Institue points out. (We ran this in the Review-Journal but didn't own the Web rights.) Money quote: Now we learn that the health care system is micromanaged by the government, even to the point of determining whether there can be air conditioning in hospitals.
Sophisticated ventilation systems are widely available and in use in the United States that can filter contaminants out of the air. The government may ...
Save the planet, off the people The campaign against SUVs got particularly ugly today, as the Earth Liberation Front apparently orchestrated several incidents of vandalism and arson at four L.A. area auto dealers. The damages exceed $1 millon. This week, ELF also took "credit" for torching a five-story residential complex in San Diego Aug. 1, causing some $50 million in damages and endangering the lives of three construction workers who were sleeping in the building. To give you an idea of the level of intellectual nuance we're dealing with here, consider this: Near the scene of that blaze, firefighters found a 12-foot-long banner bearing the hand-lettered message: "IF YOU BUILD IT -- WE WILL BURN IT -- THE E.L.F.'s ARE MAD." As my friend Virginia Postrel points out, no response to date from SUV-bashing California gubernatorial candidate Arianna Huffington. Also no response from the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Foundation, or any other more-mainstream envi...